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HAWA'd NEI 




Young Hawaiian Girl. 



HAWAII NEI 



BY 



MABEL CLARE ( CRAFT) XW^w£, 



'* 



ILLUSTRATED 




WILLIAM DOXEY 

AT THE SIGN OF THE LARK 

SAN FRANCISCO 

1899 



Copyright 1898 
By William Doxey 

SffJCJL 
/7 # ' ¥3 






TO THOSE WELL-REMEMBERED ONES 

DWELLERS, SOME, IN PEACEFUL, OCEAN-GIRT HAWAII 

VOYAGERS, OTHERS, FARING UPON MANY SEAS 

WHOSE GENTLE COURTESY ADDED 

UNFORGETTABLE PLEASURE TO THE 

MIDSUMMER'S JOURNEY, OF WHICH 

SOME ACCOUNT IS HERE SET DOWN 

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED 

A TOKEN OF GRATEFUL APPRECIATION 

AND ESTEEM 



TO BEGIN WITH 

Many travelers before me have felt Hawaii's spell — that 
subtle influence which touches your lips and eyes when 
first you see the islands floating like purple morning- 
glories on the sea. And until you leave them glimmer- 
ing astern, the witchery never departs — so dangerous a 
fascination has this siren of the south for stern Ulysses of 
the north. It is an illusive charm that is not altogether 
describable; the languor of the island life must be lived. 
But tarry not too long, lest the clinging hands from the 
coral reef bind you fast in willing chains. 

The old island life is fading like a wraith. Faint mists 
of it still linger about the mountains, in nooks and vales 
where Caucasian feet have not left too many hob-nailed 
tracks. The emigrant and the tourist improve few 
lands, and the old savagery and its calm content are but 
memories. 

I am aware that my criticism of the Hawaiian repub- 
lic will not be received with favor in Honolulu's narrow 
governmental circles. I do not believe that might neces- 
sarily makes right, and I have but reflected the political 
sentiments of the majority of Hawaiians as I found them 
during the summer of annexation, when hearts were pecu- 
liarly stirred by the culmination of an injustice that 
amounted to crime. The Hawaiian republic knew noth- 
ing of the ' ' consent of the governed. ' ' The most signifi- 



Vlll TO BEGIN WITH 

cant commentary on the late unlamented republic is, that 
at its last election about 2,600 voters were registered, 
and about 1,800 voted; while at the last election under 
the Queen about 4,800 were registered, and some 3,200 
voted. 

In Hawaii is the old spirit that abides in unhappy- 
Poland, that burns in the breasts of Alsace-Lorraine. 
The looting of the Hawaiian monarchy by a few Ameri- 
cans was a sort of successful Jameson raid, and not an 
exploit over which any American need thrill with pride. 

What I have said is only what every unprejudiced 
observer who goes to original sources may find for him- 
self. Official sources are not always safe guides. The 
registration reports are open to all — so are the land- 
titles — and the white oligarchy, which seventy years ago 
was a hungry missionary band with emaciated purses, 
speaks for itself. 

I have friends devoted to annexation and friends who 
are stanch royalists. My own opinion was formed 
entirely during my stay in the islands. It is merely an 
individual opinion, but a sincere one. 

"And each in his separate star 
Shall draw the Thing as he sees it, 
For the God of Things As They Are. " 

It is the thing as I saw it. 

A few chapters of this book appeared originally in 
the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Sun, the 
New York Tribune, the Philadelphia Press, and other 
American newspapers, in the form of letters from Hono- 
lulu, written on the eve of and immediately following the 
formal transfer of Hawaii to her new sovereignty. Such 



TO BEGIN WITH IX 

revision as these chapters have undergone has been chiefly 
for the sake of condensation. 

During my visit, Liliuokalani was at home and mak- 
ing a tour of the islands, and I had a chance to contrast 
her reception with the greeting of the Annexation Com- 
missioners from America, also touring the islands. Some 
of the scenes I had the good fortune to witness may not 
occur again. They pass with the old. In the chapter 
on folk-lore, I am indebted to Liliuokalani, to Rollin M. 
Daggett's work on "The Legends and Myths of Ha- 
waii," and to Judge Abram Fornander's "Account of 
the Polynesian Race; Its Origin and Migrations." 

Old customs, old ways of living are rapidly disappear- 
ing, but some things remain unspoiled. The landscape, 
in all its beauty, is Hawaii's inalienable heritage, and 
there remains, too, a generous, hospitable, simple people, 
with handsome brown faces, illuminated by as kindly 
hearts as God ever placed in human breasts. Wrong 
has not embittered them. They give you greeting for 
your own sake, hoping only that you may see the truth 
and do them justice. Coming, their hands are first to 
greet you; going, the lets that they twine about your 
neck binds you to them, long after the odorous flower- 
wreaths have faded and have been cast upon the hill of 
waters rising between you. 

And so from dreams the islands grow to realities, then 
fade to dreams again — fair Hawaii nei, little sister of the 
States. 

M. C. C. 

San Francisco, October 5, 1898. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I — Voyaging Island wards i 

II — Hawaii's Capital 8 

III— The Tropic Republic 14 

IV — The American Colony 35 

V — Native Living 46 

VI — The Transplanted Oriental .-^. 63 

Vy — Hawaii Becomes America 76 

VIII— A Queen's Home-Coming 91 

IX — How Royalty Is Buried 101 

X — The Kahuna Passes. . ,109 

XI — The Diver 123 

XII — Picturesque Oahu 132 

XIII — In Hawaii's Lee 145 

XIV— Windward Hawaii . . 172 

XV— Legends and Folk- Lore 183 



X 




3 



X 



HAWAII NEI 

CHAPTER I 

VOYAGING ISLANDWARDS 

It is a geographical blessing that one cannot reach 
Hawaii by rail. To arrive there with soot in the eyes 
and dust in the garments, tired and travel-stained, with 
the throb of the rails sounding in the ears, and desirous 
only of a bath and a bed, would be like appearing before 
royalty in old clothes. But to slip smoothly down through 
six days of delicious rest and languor is fit preparation 
for entering into the presence of this queen of the sun- 
down sea. 

The days at sea are full of dreams and laziness. It is 
a rest cure on a gigantic scale, with a hundred people 
taking it all at once. There is absolute lack of anything 
exciting from without; and woe to them who do not 
carry that store of memories within which makes gay the 
gravest day. Sometimes the voyager watches through the 
glass another steamer, plowing the parallel miles. Some- 
times he may see a deep-laden sugar barkentine, beating 
up the wind in the distant horizon. There are magnifi- 
cent sunrises and moonrises, like ships on fire; and the 



2 HAWAII NEI 

sun sets in a glory of clouds and sky to be seen nowhere 
on dry land. 

For the first few days the sea air is so sharp that rugs 
are a comfort, and then it grows so soft and warm that 
the canopied deck is a necessity. About the same time 
the sea changes from green to blue — a blue like lapis 
lazuli, more blue than the sapphire. Somebody has 
called it ' ' cold suds and blueing, ' ' but it is far too beau- 
tiful to be compared with anything so prosaic. And with 
the wonderful sea-color, the flying-fish appear. They 
seem a piece of the sea; for they too are blue, and 
ocean, sky, and fish are shades of the same color. There 
was never a voyage when a flying-fish did not make for 
the lighted saloon windows and dash himself to death on 
the cabin floor. It is the marine version of the moth-and- 
candle story. There never was a chief steward who did 
not take the flying-fish tenderly in his hands and carry 
him around to show to the passengers, pretending that 
the coming of one on board was an unusual thing, and 
giving that pleasant sense of difference and distinction 
that even- traveler loves. It is so pleasant to say to 
your friends in Honolulu: "And we had a flying -fish. 
He dashed himself to death against the windows of the 
cabin." To which they invariably reply: "Yes; they 
always do that the fourth day out." 

Ah, the wily steward, who made us believe it was an 
Occurrence! 

The blue sea and the blue fish, with their gauzy 
butterfly wings and their scales like blue metal, are signs 
of the tropics. The ocean becomes an oily plain, and 
the waves are smoothed out into the long, lazy swell of 
low latitudes. By day there is not even a pillar of cloud 



HAWAII NEI 3 

to guide us, but by night it is a favorite diversion to 
watch the phosphorescent gleam of tiny lights around 
the ship's prow. Minute animal organisms they may 
really be, but we prefer to think them fireflies of the 
deep, or reflected stars. 

And now the convalescent passengers creep on deck, 
saffron in tint as contrasted with the ruddy people who 
spend their nights in sweet sleep, their days in a brisk 
canter about deck, and who eat at every possible oppor- 
tunity — sometimes six times a day. 

Here is a young man said to be "in coffee," just up 
from a hospital operation, who crawls with transparent 
white hands fastened to a stick. His skin is pale and 
luminous, and his features are out of all proportion to his 
cheeks. He eats on every occasion. He has an early 
cup of coffee in bed, a more substantial tiffin at eight, a 
luncheon at noon, a cup of tea and a fresh cookie at four, 
a dinner at half-past six, and a cup of something hot at 
ten. And before the six days are passed his thin cheeks 
are filling out, his hands are browner and have lost their 
transparency, and sometimes he forgets his cane for 
hours. There are other passengers interesting to 
watch — elderly globe-trotters with short skirts, many 
shawls, and a courier. 

During the early days of the trip there are many 
vacant seats at table — the places of those who have fallen 
by the wayside. Trays go to cabin doors and come back 
untouched. The purser goes to the ship's library, and 
Stoddard' s book on the islands, which talks of ' ' drifting 
to Paradise on an even keel," is cleverly abstracted; for 
the early days are a bit choppy, and the purser hates to 
be asked angrily a hundred times a day if this is drifting 



4 HAWAII NEI 

to Paradise on an even keel! But gradually the chairs 
fill up and are at a premium; for after all it is really the 
mildest sort of an ocean experience. The delightful 
drifting before a fair wind with all sails set, and an aver- 
age of 354 miles a day, must come to an end some time. 
In fact, we have been going faster than the wind, and our 
idle, flapping sails merely steady the ship and look well 
in the log-book. A day or two before Honolulu the 
guide-books come out. Heads bend over them, and little 
pencils scratch on tiny tablets. The students of guide- 
book and encyclopedia find that the islands are not prop- 
erly called ' ' South Sea Islands, ' ' but constitute, instead, 
the only important group in the North Pacific; that they 
have no connection with the South Sea groups beyond 
certain affinities of race and language; that they are so 
advantageously placed as to be about equidistant from 
California, Mexico, China, and Japan; and that they are 
in the torrid zone, extending from i8° 54' to 22 15', 
north latitude, with a longitude from 154 50' to 160 30' 
west from Greenwich. Old Spanish charts prove that the 
Spanish navigators knew of them, but, according to 
Spanish custom, kept their knowledge from the world, 
until the islands were rediscovered by Captain Cook, in 
1778. 

The distance of Hawaii from the Californian coast is 
a little more than two thousand miles. The islands lie at 
the cross-roads where the great ocean routes to Australia 
and China cross. They are called ' ' Hawaiian ' ' from the 
name of the largest island. Captain Cook gave them the 
name of the Sandwich islands, in honor of his patron, the 
Earl of Sandwich, then First Lord of the British Admi- 
ralty; but the English name has almost passed from use, 



HAWAII NEI 5 

and is seldom heard. It is a vulgarism, like the name 
"Kanaka," as applied to the natives of the islands. 
"Kanaka" is a native name, meaning simply "man," 
and the natives like it as a cognomen about as well as a 
respectable Chinese likes to be called "John Chinaman." 

The travelers, over their guide-books, raise their heads 
with exclamations of surprise. The islands are so much 
larger than they thought them — six thousand seven hun- 
dred square miles in all, about equal to the principality 
of Wales or the kingdom of Saxony, with Hawaii, the 
principal island, nearly as large as the State of Connec- 
ticut. There are eight inhabited islands, extending from 
northwest to southeast, over a distance of about 380 
miles. The names, some of them unfamiliar, are Hawaii, 
Maui, Kahoolawe, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kauai, and 
Niihau. Nor did the tourists dream that Hawaii con- 
tains the highest mountains of any island in the world, 
only a few peaks of the Alps being as high as Mauna Loa 
and Mauna Kea, while Haleakala, on Maui, is about 
equal to Mount Etna in extent and elevation, and is, 
moreover, the largest extinct crater in the world. 

People look up from their books to inquire if the coco- 
palm, which produces coir rope, cocoanuts, and a hun- 
dred other useful things, is the same which produces 
chocolate, not knowing that the tall, ragged palm, on its 
slender stem, with its long and useful life of two hundred 
years or more, is not the same plant as the cacao-bush, 
or anything like it. There is also a persistent belief that 
the islanders were formerly cannibals, a sturdy theory 
that will not down, and is based on some legend as to the 
eating of Captain Cook. I was careful to run down that tale. 
One day, at dinner, I asked the great-granddaughter 



6 HAWAII NEI 

of a chiefess who was present at the killing of the dis- 
tinguished navigator about this reputed feast. She said 
that the heart of Captain Cook became mixed with 
some dog-meat and was eaten by mistake. The testi- 
mony of the lineal descendant of an eye-witness ought to 
be good authority. As a matter of fact, the Hawaiians 
never were cannibals. Their sacrifice of human life 
merely marked a form of worship common to many 
pagan creeds. The idea of eating human flesh was 
abhorred. Why should they feast on one another when 
pig was plentiful and good ? 

And having discussed the cannibal question with some 
warmth, the travelers go back to the exhuming of more 
statistics. They find that the island idols exist only in 
museums; that the islanders cast them away voluntarily 
in 1819, at the very time when the first missionaries were 
on their way around Cape Horn; that the natives, who 
were decreasing rapidly in the seventies, and were threat- 
ened with total extinction, have since then gained some 
ground, and are not now decreasing so rapidly; that the 
population of the islands in 1896 was 109,020, 31,019 
being Hawaiians, 8,485 part Hawaiians, 3,086 Americans, 
15,000 Portuguese, 4,000 other Europeans, 24,000 Jap- 
anese, and 21,000 Chinese; and that the soil, which is 
described in prospectuses as flowing with milk and honey 
and producing wild all sorts of luxuries, is in reality poor, 
with nature yielding little spontaneously. Later they 
find that the valleys are fertile and productive, but limited 
in extent, and that the dry plains may be made fertile by 
irrigation. Intending settlers are sorry to discover that 
most of the available land is already taken up, and they 
will be still further astonished to learn the price of land 



HAWAII NEI 7 

in the valleys. There is not much left in Hawaii for the 
poor man, and even the capitalist will have some diffi- 
culty making an entrance where everything is already 
owned and incorporated. 

But there is other knowledge that is more pleasant. 
Everybody knows that Hawaii's is the most salubrious 
climate on earth, but everybody does not know that it is 
almost absolutely equable, and that a man may take his 
choice between broiling all the year round at the sea- 
level, on the leeward side of the islands, at a temperature 
of 8 5 , or may enjoy the charms of a fireside at an alti- 
tude where there is frost every night in the year. To 
get any desired climate, you need only to follow Mark 
Twain's advice, and mark the place on the thermometer 
that suits you best; then climb until the mercury drops 
to the mark. It is a simple recipe for getting the needed 
change of season. 

The physical geographists will tell you that the vol- 
canoes died out from north to south, which makes Kauai, 
the garden isle, to the north, the oldest of its brethren 
and the most fertile. You can see for yourself that Maui 
and Hawaii are the youngest and most restless of the 
group. Unfinished Hawaii is still smoking, and its track- 
less wastes of lava, unfit for cultivation, are destined to 
lie idle for hundreds of years. 

And then one yawns and lounges to the cabin, where 
less serious- minded people play at cards, waiting to learn 
geography from personal observation, which is, after all, 
the best and the only unforgettable way. 



8 HAWAII NEI 



CHAPTER II 

HAWAII'S CAPITAL 

Against a background of green and shimmering val- 
leys, full of showers and sunshine and arched with rain- 
bows, Honolulu sits and dabbles her feet in the sea. 
Never was a city more beautifully located — nor have 
painters found a more delicious landscape than this 
changeful one in the South Pacific, variable as some 
women, but always lovely and never losing its fickle 
charm. One gets up at five in the morning to see the 
faint gray, blurred outlines of barren Molokai and to 
make a first study of a Hawaiian sky — a sketch in water- 
colors, where huge masses of feathery clouds tumble and 
pile and change against a curtain of iridescent hues that 
gradually merges into one of divinest blue. And pres- 
ently it is the huge truncated cone of Diamond Head 
that comes into view — one of the sentinels that have kept 
watch over Oahu these thousand years. The volcano 
blew its head off years and years ago, and the unsightly 
wound has healed with the wonderfully recuperative pow- 
ers of nature in this part of the world. It is not a high 
mountain now, but before that terrific explosion it must 
have been a soaring peak with a lofty head in the blue. 
Now its ragged sides seem to have slipped waterward, 
and its well-known profile is one of the landmarks of the 
coast. 




A Typical Half- White. 



HAWAII NEI 9 

I looked in vain for the palms that fringe the coast of 
fiction — those "feather-dusters in a cyclone" that are 
the sign and symbol of the tropics. Not a coco-palm 
raised its plumed head on slender, willowy trunk. All 
was dry, sandy, and unprofitable. But presently a bend 
in the coast, and then the green shore of pictures and 
imagination — a broad belt of freshness and verdure — 
and against the yellows and browns of the ragged range, 
bending cocoanut-palms and fluttering bananas to lend 
the tropical touch. And from the land, into the face of 
the rising sun, crept that perfumed breeze that blows in 
dreams of Araby. It is, indeed, a land of ten thousand 
Junes. 

And we, bending over the rail in the languorous airs 
of early morning — for here is no chill freshness of 
dawn — note that the sea is changing from the ultra- 
marine of the mid- Pacific to the emerald of the shallows, 
beneath which lie the shining sands and the living coral 
of the reef. 

The harbor of Honolulu is difficult and set with 
dangers, and the good ship feels her way cautiously along 
the channel. Buoys mark out the narrow road which 
leads to safety, the path of righteousness being one of 
twists and turns, and the ship is at last snugly harbored 
where hull rubs hull within narrow confines. The bay 
of Honolulu is an overcrowded inn, where every guest- 
chamber is taken. 

Around the ship darts a school of divers — brown boys 
who leap like dolphins at play. Nothing could be 
smoother or slimmer than their graceful, gleaming bodies. 
They skim and dive for silver, and come from the green 
depths with the coins in their mouths to show you their 



IO HAWAII XEI 

agility and skill. They shriek shrilly to attract your 
attention, and go wriggling to the very bottom of the 
bay after the coin. A penurious person from east of the 
Mississippi flips a copper, and the divers detect it instantly 
and laugh contemptuously. 

The pier is covered with people — a blare of bright 
colors against a background of white. The black gar- 
ments to which our eyes are accustomed are utterly lack- 
ing, and the sun beats down on the white, and is reflected 
back again with an increase of heat. Behind the low 
white town, umbrellaed in shade, radiate beautiful valleys 
like the spokes of a wheel. They are so filled with 
verdure, that they seem to be lined with green velvet, 
and, like horns of plenty, they have emptied all their 
treasure on the scant shore where Honolulu sits and 
threatens to slide into the sea. Behind the city is the 
commanding eminence of Punchbowl, another dead and 
buried crater, whose quenched fires must once have 
turned midnight to midday where Honolulu now stands. 
Peaks and towers and domes rise behind, making moun- 
tainous lacework against the sky, each telling his tale of 
those tremendous upheavals when this still unfinished 
land rose from the sea. 

If you arrive in the summer it is a moist and sticky 
morning, and you press through the warm and clinging 
crowd into one of the waiting hacks, which are not hacks 
at all, but surreys, and the Honolulu hackman fastens 
his talons upon you. Strangers are his legitimate prey. 
To residents he is kindly and indulgent — to travelers 
merciless. He looks at you, estimates your resources, 
and demands them all. And you, a poor limp rag, 
bathed in perspiration, and with a moral fiber melted 



HAWAII NEI II 

with heat, fall into the inevitable Honolulu indolence and 
call a carnage to go three blocks. The result is an 
impaired liver, a digestion gone wrong, and perhaps, 
accumulated weight. The curse of Honolulu is not the 
climate, but the laziness it engenders. Meanwhile the 
hackmen with their rubber-tired vehicles and their soft 
cushions and their cool linen rugs fatten like spiders. 
Just before you come away you learn that the regular 
price for any fare within the city proper is twenty-five 
cents, and that for long trips the same rule applies as 
elsewhere in the world, and it is imperative to drive a 
bargain in advance. 

But even the octopus of a hackman cannot make you 
forget the streets through which you spin. The ponciana 
regia is bursting over your head in a crimson crown, the 
Golden Shower is throwing pendent clusters of yellow 
at your feet, the scarlet hibiscus nods at you from hedge- 
rows, like eglantine in an English spring, and the thirsty 
banyan, with hundreds of drinking feelers which have 
sapped the earth beneath and rendered it verdureless, 
invites you to stop and rest in its heavy shade. Tattered 
bananas offer sunnier shelter, where light and shadow 
tremble alternately. There are no trees to remind you 
of home. All leaves are light and feathery, like the tam- 
arind, or heavy and polished and waxen, like the bread- 
fruit. You look in vain for a familiar tree-face in all that 
green and thronging crowd. These are the trees of the 
Tropic of Cancer, and the temperate zone is only a 
memory. 

The air is heavy with the perfume of myriads of tube- 
roses and waxen pomerias. The streets are narrow and 
crooked, amazingly intricate at first sight. They branch 



12 HAWAII NEI 

in every direction as if from a common center. They 
are muddy from the showers that fall every night and 
almost every day, and the trees meet overhead in a 
soft dense shade. After the wharves come little low- 
browed shops and some pretentious stores; but even in 
the best of them primal colors jostle others of opposite 
disposition, and the quarreling combination shows that 
these people, so rich in wondrous color effects, have 
never studied the sequence in their own rainbows. The 
screaming juxtaposition is said to be for the benefit of 
the native who still has the brilliant taste of barbarism. 

The houses are so modest among the shade-trees that 
the first glimpse tells little of their architecture. They 
smack of New England with blinds and gables, but they 
are without chimneys, and the twenty-foot-wide verandas 
are a Southern innovation. The tropical trees that 
surround them, the giant ferns and the fruits are impor- 
tations from across the island, for this side of Oahu is not 
naturally tropical. In the verandas, inclosed for the 
most part, and called lanais, the family life goes on. 
There are cushions and couches, cool braided mats, and 
writing-tables. Often the family dines here, and one 
could sleep on the veranda in comfort. Here callers are 
received, and the household life ebbs and flows in the 
open air. 

At last there is the hotel — the Royal Hawaiian — built 
by the government in the days of kings, and now float- 
ing the American flag. The hotel is set in the deepest 
shade of all. The dry pods of tamarinds rattle far over- 
head, the sunlight trickles in thin streams between many 
leaves both broad and thick, and tremulous aspen shadows 
flicker on the natural sward. Myna-birds, each with its 



HAWAII NEI 13 

single white feather, dart about on the grass. These birds, 
were introduced to remove a pest, but now, multiplied 
in this warm, nourishing climate, are themselves become 
a plague, like so many other imported blessings. Beyond 
the trees may be seen the soaring tower of the Govern- 
ment Building, which was not long ago Iolani Palace. It 
was the home of a king, and saw its dynasty rise and 
fall. It has looked unmoved on little revolutions, and 
has been a royal prison. Over a stone wall, with a 
wealth of vine atop, is a lofty church — a monument to 
missionary forehandedness. As the church rose, the 
palace toppled and fell. 

The hotel lanai is big and luxurious, with palms and 
growing green things, and gold-fish sporting in a big glass 
bowl. Everything is cool except the traveler, who mops 
an unaccustomed brow and orders a lemonade. It comes 
in a big, deep, wide - lipped glass, the ice tinkling against 
the thin sides. A huge mosquito, with chinchilla legs, 
striped in gray and black, settles down upon you and 
bids you welcome to Honolulu. 



14 HAWAII NEI 



CHAPTER III 

THE TROPIC REPUBLIC 

There is nothing in American public life to cause an 
association of ideas between politics and religion, but in 
the islands they go hand and hand. To be in politics 
under the late republic one needed also to be in religion; 
but after a study of the political conditions of the islands, 
I have come to the conclusion that in Hawaii, as in 
America, true religion and "practical politics" have not 
even a bowing acquaintance. 

The men who went to Hawaii to teach the native the 
way in which he should go, began by being the power 
behind the throne, and ended with being the power in 
front of it. When the missionary could no longer rule 
in the shade of the cloak of yellow feathers, he boldly 
threw off the sheltering garment and took the scepter for 
his own. There ended the most picturesque of island 
monarchies. I was not bred a royalist, and monarchical 
forms are not my forms, but seeing the republic of 
Hawaii in its expiring days, I cannot but think what an 
ideal place this must have been when native chiefs and 
chiefesses ruled in the islands of Hawaii. At the mere 
mention of their names the missionaries hold up their 
hands in horror. They cannot speak of Hawaii's latest 
sovereigns without a pious imprecation. To their cross- 
eyed mental vision all luaus were orgies and all pleasure 



HAWAII NEI 15 

unholy. Doubtless some of these strictures are just; 
but, as an offset, it should be remembered that many of 
these profligate personages were also the kind and gen- 
erous patrons of the missionary clan. The advisers of 
royalty were mainly white, and it was not until there rose 
up a woman whom they could not control that the mis- 
sionaries found the royal yoke intolerable. And as for 
Hawaiian royalty, its behavior was much the same as 
that of royalty in other lands — much as it will always be 
while wealth and power buy everything in the world 
except happiness. 

And so any glimpse of the incongruous tropic repub- 
lic that was transplanted to this land of royal traditions 
must begin with the missionaries who came in the brig 
Thaddeus, arriving off the coast in the spring of 1820. 
The first of these gospel families settled in Kailua, and 
that little peaceful town is pointed out as the place where 
civilization first came to the islands. Some people call it 
the spot where the serpent entered Eden, but that 
depends on the point of view. At any rate, the advent 
of the missionary was the turning-point in Hawaiian his- 
tory. There had been centuries of civil war and pillage, 
with intervals of peace and prosperity under an occasional 
strong chief who knew how to protect his people. The 
great Kamehameha, whose commanding bronze figure 
still reigns over Honolulu — the strutting infant republic 
not having banished him — had subdued his rivals and 
brought the islands under a single sovereignty. This 
native chief was the first to conceive the imperial idea, 
and he carried it out through a long life. There is a 
decided tendency in missionary publications to belittle 
Kamehameha, and a concentrated effort to make it appear 



1 6 HAWAII NEI 

that all his victories were won because of the assistance of 
whites and firearms. Nothing is said of the fact that 
Kamehameha was the first chief to apply the use of fire- 
arms to island warfare. In one Hawaiian history it is 
emphasized that the corner-stone of Kamehameha' s empire 
was laid in blood. I do not recall any historical corner- 
stones which were laid otherwise. 

The second Kamehameha was even braver than the 
island Napoleon who preceded him; for he dared to meet 
and fight with the ancient superstitions of his race, and 
to throw off the galling yoke of the ancient tabus. It 
was an act comparable to the freeing of the serfs in 
Russia — not forced in any way, and one by which the 
king gave up many privileges, that he might easily have 
continued to exact. 

The strenuous laws of the tabu carried originally the 
most frightful penalties; but as nothing followed the 
breaking of all their cherished tables of stone, the 
islanders, quick to reason from effect to cause, turned 
from their idols and deserted their temples. The soil 
was ripe for a new religion, and about half the mission- 
aries' work was done. 

I have visited the old Thurston house at Kailua, on 
the island of Hawaii. It is a good type of the missionary 
house all through the islands, and in its decay it is eloquent 
of the motives and methods of these men who came to 
preach the gospel to the heathen, and to cry aloud in 
the tropical wilderness. To New England the natives 
were heathen. Bigotry still esteems them such. There 
was not the slightest attempt to conform to native archi- 
tecture. Instead, a frame house came out from the old 
country, and soon a New England manse, all gables and 



HAWAII NEI 17 

eaves and doors with fan-lights, reared its head on the 
green sloping hill that backs Kailua. The house must 
have been very hot and uncomfortable, entirely unadapted 
as it was to the island climate. The attic rooms must 
have been close and stuffy, and the lack of wide verandas 
a real deprivation. The old garden with its high and 
frowning fence may still be seen. Within this inclosure, 
Mrs. Thurston kept the little Thurstons, with strict 
injunctions that under no circumstances were they to 
hold converse with the natives. It was her boast that 
her children were to be brought up like New England 
children — no settlement idea this. The very house 
shows its desire to be exclusive. It is set half-way up 
the hillside in a maze of green, at some distance from the 
grass houses that fringed the sea, where the gregarious 
natives huddled as close together as possible. That 
there was some doubt of the sincerity of the friendly 
natives in the minds of these early teachers, is shown by 
the little peep-holes in the doors, like loop-holes in an 
Indian blockhouse. Everywhere the most determined 
effort was made to graft the civilization of New England 
upon this land of the banana and the coco-palm. Mrs. 
Thurston wanted a milk-house like the one at home, and 
she took for that purpose a cave at the back of the house. 
It was a cool grotto, and there she set her milk-pans, and 
did everything in the good old way. What did she care 
that the cave went underground all the way to the sea, 
coming out at last in a delicious cove at the water's edge, 
which was tabu and sacred to the chief who used to bathe 
there? Surf-bathing was no part of the New England 
curriculum, and bathing au nature I was wicked. And 
60 the tabu cave and subterranean passage was used as a 



1 8 HAWAII NEI 

dairy, until one day one of the earthquakes that happen 
along almost every day in this new island of Hawaii, 
tumbled huge bowlders about the milk-house, and threw 
stones into the Thurston pans, and after that the lady of 
the manse relished the place no more. 

The trouble with the missionary plan here, as in most 
places, was that it purposed to establish out of hand a 
scheme of civilization for which the islanders were all 
unprepared. It ignored all the preparation and gradual 
growth of Anglo-Saxon ideals, and sought to transplant 
the full-grown tree to another and entirely dissimilar land, 
where no condition was the same. It was as if England 
had skipped from John to Victoria. The result was that 
the islanders were plunged into the swift, unaccustomed 
current, and speedily ingulfed. When the missionaries 
taught them religion, they should also have taught them 
how to maintain themselves in the throat-cutting civiliza- 
tion of the Anglo-Saxon. 

The natives died in shoals, and the survivors to this 
day say, ' ' The white man is too smart for us. ' ' 

It is the missionary fallacy that the Gospel and civili- 
zation are the best things in the world for the "benighted 
savage," the aforesaid "benighted savage" being repre- 
sented as eating fresh wild fruits in the day and sleeping 
under the stars, spending the interval up in a coco-palm 
scanning the horizon for a missionary sail, and waiting to 
be discovered by civilization and rescued from a state of 
perfect contentment, which he can never by any chance 
regain. 

The islands were still in the feudal period. There was 
no such thing as a fee-simple in land. On the death of a 
high chief, the land was re-apportioned. The common 



HAWAII NEI 19 

people paid tribute to petty chiefs, the petty chiefs 
to more powerful ones, and so on. The immediate 
followers of the moi, or king of the island, were bound 
to furnish him with a certain stated number of armed 
retainers in time of war. It was, in little, a perfect feudal 
state, with all the civil war and trouble that attended 
feudalism in Europe. And upon this basis, constantly 
changing with the ambitions of petty chieftains, the mis- 
sionaries expected to rear New England systems, and 
New England ideas. History does not like to jump five 
hundred years. Her protest meant the diminution and 
gradual extermination of the natives. The strongest 
ones made a desperate effort to keep pace with the 
whites; the weaker fell by the wayside. The happiest 
Kanaka is the dead Kanaka, and the land is honey- 
combed with their burial-places. 

This view does not find much sympathy in the islands 
or elsewhere. There is a prevailing idea that lurks 
under white skins, that the Anglo-Saxon civilization is 
the only one worth having, and that it is destined to 
spread over the earth. The terrible monotony of this 
thing when it shall have come to pass never occurs to 
any one. A little well-meant regret for the passing of 
the good-tempered, good-looking Polynesian, is greeted 
with the contemptuous remark: "Oh, that is mere senti- 
ment. We do not want a picturesque government. We 
want one that we can make money under. No white 
man is going to be ruled by a black one. ' ' 

The suggestion that the white man might have stayed 
at home, is received with scorn and answered with 
silence. 

As fast as the natives were ready, they passed on to 



20 HAWAII NEI 

the better and more kindly world for which they had 
been prepared, and no one stopped to consider whether 
it was better to be a live savage than a dead Christian. 
As the native population grew less and less, the only 
recognition of the fact was a pious whisper that God's 
will should be done. And in a few years it came to pass 
that the teeming island was decimated — the island once 
so populous in spite of civil strife that a string of ten 
thousand natives stretched from hills to coast and 
passed up from hand to hand the coral blocks for the 
building of a heiazi, or heathen temple. Wild tobacco 
now grows on the hillsides within the tumble-down walls 
of deserted kuleanas, as the natives call their home- 
steads, and it is only under the sod that Hawaii is popu- 
lated with her native citizens. The Kanaka found the 
burden of civilization too heavy, and so laid him down 
and died. 

There is nothing to be said against the motives of the 
pious exiles who immured themselves in this beautiful 
land, though 1 should think that the change from the 
bleak New England hillsides and the stony New England 
farms to this land whose teeming soil yielded all sorts of 
delicious fruits, and whose landscape was a panorama of 
beautiful scenes, would have been like the change from 
Purgatory to Paradise, and by no means a form of martyr- 
dom. The missionaries meant well by the natives. They 
began by showing them their sins of omission and com- 
mission. The bewildered Kanaka, who never intended 
to do anything that was wrong, found that he had all 
along been committing the most heinous sins uncon- 
sciously. In the first place, he was unclothed. His only 
garment was the malo, a strip of kapa cloth bound around 



HAWAII NEI 21 

his waist, and knotted adroitly about the loins. His 
women wore an ample skirt of kapa, extending from 
waist to knee, and consisting of many folds of the cloth 
that is beaten from the inner bark of trees, and which 
rustles like the cast-off skins of ten thousand serpents. 
Clothes are a superfluity in Hawaii, and worn only for 
conventionality's sweet sake. The first thing the mis- 
sionary had to do was to teach the native to be ashamed, 
no reptile busybody or kindly tree having brought self- 
consciousness to this island Eden. For the men the 
hideous pantaloon and the shirt were introduced to hide 
the brown satin skin that always looks dressed to Cau- 
casian eyes. For the women the more hideous holoku 
was devised to cover the turn of a trim ankle and the 
dimple of a dainty elbow. No doubt the shapeless pro- 
totype of the ' ' Mother Hubbard, ' ' with its square yoke, 
was easy for missionary Dorcas societies to turn out in 
untold numbers, and the missionary ladies never dreamed 
that these hopelessly unbecoming garments, in which the 
charms of maid and matron were alike swallowed up, 
could ever be made to suggest as well as to reveal. 

The missionaries even sought to prohibit the wearing 
of the lei — the charming wreath of strung flowers that 
is characteristic of the South Seas. They thought the 
custom indicative of a light mind, when, in reality, it was 
only the sign of a light heart. But the love of flowers 
was too deep to be rooted out, and the natives who had 
meekly gone into their trousers and holokus refused, 
gently but firmly, to abandon their leis. 

Having taught the natives that it was sinful to go com- 
fortably unclothed, the missionaries, or their relatives and 
friends from New England, opened stores and sold them 



22 HAWAII NEI 

the necessary cloth. They taught them that the Hawaiian 
custom of cleaning the bones and laying the skeleton to 
rest in burial-caves was unchristian. Coffins were the 
thing, and they sold them coffins. It was six days in the 
store and one in the sanctuary, and the natives, gentle, 
tractable, and easily led, grew rapidly in the direction 
pointed out to them. Gradually, by some occult pro- 
cess, the little kuleanas began to slip from their uncom- 
mercial fingers, the small holdings were gradually 
consolidated in the hands of a few Americans, and the 
first great fortunes had their rise in Hawaii. 

It was all by due form of law, I have no doubt. Noth- 
ing is so unjust as justice, and none know so well as the 
American how to fit the forms of law over things that 
equity abhors. Usually, the native mortgaged his land 
for a small amount to give a feast, or to entertain his 
friends. Though the loan was small, the interest was not, 
and the idea of paying the interest never occurred to the 
native. It was not long before the mortgaged kuleana 
was the property of the coming land barons. The 
records are all quite straight and aboveboard. They 
tell how many feet to the mauka side, which is toward 
the mountain, and how many feet ma/caz, toward the sea, 
the kuleanas ran. How many of the natives understood 
the true meaning of a mortgage, and who took the 
trouble to explain it to them? A people which has 
never been allowed to alienate its land, merely holding it 
as tenants at will, cannot be trusted with the absolute 
right of its bestowal. In this case, the Hawaiians were 
better off* under their feudal system with the slender 
claim of fealty on their land, than as free men without 
any land at all. At first they did not know what it 



HAWAII NEI 23 

meant. Had they really parted with all their taro- 
patches and cocoanut-groves ? Once every man had his 
bit to cultivate. Now they stand landless and empty- 
handed. 

More and more the whites gained the confidence of 
the island monarchs. Some of these were strong and 
kindly, and willing to do much for their people. Some 
were merely good imitators, aping in miniature the royal 
manners and morals of sovereigns elsewhere. Always 
the whites, often the missionaries, were chief counselors 
of the kings, and always the commercial Anglo-Saxon 
waxed more powerful in exact proportion to his money* 
for in Hawaii, as elsewhere, money is the common term 
to which all problems are at last reduced — the universal 
solvent. 

At last there came a time when commercial interests 
demanded annexation. The whites practically owned 
the islands. They objected to being heavily taxed for 
the support of a gay and extravagant court. The morals 
of the court were also objected to, but the morals were 
as they always had been. It was the sensitive pocket 
rather than the sensitive conscience that was touched. 
The monarchy died easily. The natives are not fighters, 
and they were not well led. Gin was substituted for 
generalship, and the result was what might have been 
expected. 

There followed the most unrepublican of republics — 
not even excepting Mexico. This was not an enlightened 
despotism, nor a dictatorship, but an oligarchy — a gov- 
ernment which at its best never represented more than a 
small minority of the inhabitants of the islands. It never 
derived its powers from the consent of the governed, 



24 



HAWAII NEI 



since only a fraction of the governed assented to it in 
any way. But this minority, though small numerically, 
was powerful commercially. It included almost all the 
moneyed men of the islands. It was a dollarocracy of 
the latest and most improved type. Before a man could 
vote he must take an ironclad oath of fealty which bound 
him not to attempt to restore the queen or to assist in 
any revolution looking toward monarchical restoration. 
To vote for senator, he must have an income of fifty 
dollars a month. The oath caught one part of the 
royalists, and the property qualification the other. The 
wealthy ones would not subscribe to the new thirty-nine 
articles, and the poor ones could not vote if they would. 
And between this Scylla and Charybdis the "family 
compact," or missionary party, had it all their own way. 
Fifty dollars a month may not seem a high qualification, 
but in a country where a native superintendent of railway 
construction — a man capable of surveying and construct- 
ing twelve miles of as well-balanced road-bed as exists 
even in America — gets but thirty-five dollars a month, 
the effect on the native vote may be imagined. Only 
the families of chiefs, and not all of them, had money 
enough to escape the sweeping provisions of the law, and 
for them to take an oath of fealty to the new government 
was out of the question. 

And in all the years that passed, the natives never forgot 
their enmity to the government, which they regarded to 
the last as the creation of a band of usurpers. 

An ordinary Hawaiian boatman, a man with a com- 
mon-school education, a good average type of his people, 
said to me one day: "I have left the native church. I 
am going to belong either to the Mormon church or the 



HAWAII NEI 25 

Catholic. They, at least, did not rob us. The mission- 
aries came here with a Bible in one hand and a butcher- 
knife in the other. They told us about heaven, and 
while we were looking up, they took everything we had." 

There are some missionaries who died poor — the 
more honor to them for their worldly unsuccess. But 
inquire into the ancestry of the island millionaires, and 
you will almost invariably find a missionary pedigree. 
The missionaries reared their sons to secular occupations. 
The records of the republic show that these, at least, 
considered themselves bound by no vow of poverty. 

Financially and governmentally, the missionary fami- 
lies have prospered. Instead of the missionary families, 
they are now the millionaire families, and only the fact 
that in almost every family one or two feeble-minded 
children form a blot on the scutcheon, reminds the 
unclerical observer that the Lord still chastens them that 
he loveth. Except for this sign, one might almost 
imagine that the Giver had lost all affection for those 
who came to christianize the islands, and had decided to 
let them grow so rich that not one of them could hope to 
enter the kingdom of heaven. 

There were some good men in the missionary repub- 
lic — some men undoubtedly earnest and sincere. Some 
of them even came to have a sort of popularity with the 
natives; but the government, as a whole, never felt sure 
enough of itself, nor certain enough of the depth of the 
grave in which the hatchet had been interred, to allow 
the native to vote. The registration of voters under the 
republic was always extremely low, and at the last 
election so small a number voted that the farcical char- 
acter of the "republic" was apparent. 



26 HAWAII NEI 

The personnel of the republic was peculiar. The 
native Hawaiians have nothing but scorn for those offi- 
cials who "kowtowed" most industriously under the 
monarchy, and were the first to undermine it They 
were the ones — Americans, too — from whose lips ' ' Your 
Majesty" flowed most obsequiously and unnecessarily. 
No royalist from birth ever paid such servile court as 
they. They even kissed the royal hand — a dark hand — 
and have been known to crawl on marrow-bone into the 
presence of the queen. Nothing in all Liliuokalani's 
book excited as much mirth in Honolulu as her passages 
concerning the struggle for precedence in her Lilliputian 
court. The best things about these tales is that every one 
in Honolulu knows they are true. But these people, 
who were willing to crawl on all-fours to win favor at 
the hands of a king, and who did win favors of many 
sorts, mainly pecuniary and official, were the very first to 
cry, ' ' Down with the monarchy ! ' ' and to make a great 
outcry about republicanism and the equal rights of free 
men, when their knees were still aching from the constant 
wear and tear. Such time-servers as these, put promi- 
nently forward in a government, bring the whole scheme 
into contempt. 

One gentleman in particular, himself a foreigner, had 
the greatest suspicion and dislike of strangers. He dis- 
trusted them all, and checkmated newcomers as far as 
possible. He never missed one of his many opportun- 
ities to snub a stranger, and played the czar in his own 
small realm. He was so vulnerable and so fearful of 
criticism that he sought uniformly to gag all expressions 
of honest opinion, and would not even disclose what 
was of public interest and importance. The whole 






HAWAII NEI 27 

government was noted for intolerance and hypocrisy. 
With a muzzled press and a close corporation of voters, 
what remains of republican ideals ? 

The newspapers in Honolulu have always been owned 
by political cliques, and only one ever dared to indulge 
in fearless criticism. The President was spoken of as 
though he were a god, and any disposition, even to 
inquire, was put down with all the savage intolerance of 
the descendants of those men who are responsible for 
that little episode at Salem. Here, under the palms, in 
a climate that would be expected to soften anything, 
appeared again that adamantine bigotry and intolerance 
which made the name of Puritan feared and hated, and 
which blackens their memory in spite of many virtues, 
even to this day. 

The one newspaper that dared to criticise is mentioned 
in the street with bated breath — never at all in polite 
missionary circles. The gag in the mouth of journalism 
extended not only to the official acts and private char- 
acters of public personages, but even to the news, which 
should know no color and no bias. Proprietors and 
stock companies were so timid of criticism that news of 
prime importance was not allowed to be published in 
Honolulu until it had been sent to the Pacific Coast, there 
published, and in due form returned to Honolulu. Then 
it might be copied, forsooth ! Even as late as the sum- 
mer of 1898, only two years before the beginning of tht 
twentieth century and one hundred and thirty-six years 
after Wilkes, a great turmoil was caused in one news- 
paper office because the paper published a thrilling 
account of an attempt to blow up one of the United 
States transports, during the war with Spain — an event 



28 HAWAII NEI 

which had a peculiar local interest, because it occurred as 
the ship was nearing Honolulu. No one questioned the 
truth of the story. The issue was made on the propriety 
of printing the tale, though it hurt no one and was legiti- 
mate news. The real reason for the suppression of such 
matters and the utterly tame and unprofitable character 
of the Honolulu press, is that the vice of Honolulu has 
always been gossip. Gossip, scandal sometimes, is the 
mental dissipation of a place where mails are few and 
uncertain, and where their insular position prevents the 
inhabitants from having anything big to think about. 
The human mind must have food, and if there is nothing 
large and soul-filling to occupy it, tittle-tattle will take its 
place. There are certain fountainheads of information 
in Honolulu, and these gentlemen are actually jealous of 
the newspapers. To have a thing published makes it 
public property and destroys their occupation. These 
men, spinning yarns like grandams in the ingle-nook, are 
the worst enemies of the dissemination of news through 
proper and legitimate channels. They have fought the 
papers all along. It is only since annexation was accom- 
plished that the Hawaiian press has ventured to stretch a 
timid hand from the swaddling-clothes wherein it has been 
almost smothered to death. The saving grace of the tel- 
egraph and the growth of party politics, with all its bitter- 
ness and strife, will be a tonic for Honolulu. It will make 
it a better and more wholesome place to live in. No 
longer will people go to band concerts solely to see if 
Mr. Somebody is talking to Mr. Somebody Else's wife. 
Reputations will be safer, for formerly Caesar's wife or 
Hamlet's love, chaste as ice, could not escape calumny. 
If a tale was spicy, they were not even careful to keep 



HAWAII NEI 29 

the original actors in the cast, but changed the characters 
as stage-managers shift their players. Such a state of 
affairs is not only uncomfortable for well-intentioned and 
well-behaved persons who are willing to submit to all 
reasonable demands of conventionality, but is, besides, 
exceedingly harmful to the colony of gossipers itself. No 
one knows when he is safe or liable to misconstruction, 
and the mind of the teller of tales grows smaller and more 
twisted and warped with each recital. 

Besides its extraordinary sensitiveness to criticism, 
which is usually the sign of an uneasy conscience, the 
Hawaiian republic has distinguished itself for arbitrariness 
and injustice. Take, for instance, the form of govern- 
ment. The President of the republic was also Governor 
of Oahu and Mayor of Honolulu. There was no muni- 
cipal government; and while this might have been for- 
given in Honolulu, it could not be overlooked that there 
was no municipal government anywhere else. Centraliza- 
tion in its most extreme and objectionable form prevailed. 
The republic was really worse than the monarchy; for 
under the later kings there was at least a governor for 
each island. And, besides, the monarchy had few ideals, 
while the republic was violating every tradition of repub- 
licanism. It was simply wearing the robes of democracy, 
while it behaved in tyrannical fashion. 

There is the case of Hilo, the second city in size in 
the islands, and a district of thirteen thousand inhabi- 
tants. Hilo has never been allowed a municipal govern- 
ment, nor even a recorder of deeds. It is more than two 
hundred miles from Honolulu. Every deed recorded 
must travel four hundred miles, and twenty days must be 
wasted. The consequence is that most of the deeds at 



Hilo are unrecorded. To build a sidewalk or to pave a 
street, permission must be sought and an appropriation 
gained from the national legislature. Is it any wonder 
that Hilo welcomed annexation with open arms as a relief 
from tyranny, or that she has all the love for Honolulu 
that St. Louis bears Chicago or that Minneapolis claims 
from St. Paul? These things charged to republicanism 
make the blood boil. I sometimes think that the men 
who planned and executed the government of Hawaii 
must have been away from America so long that they had 
forgotten everything about Liberty except her name. 

I have charged the late Hawaiian government with 
hypocrisy. The deeds that merit the name might amount 
to nothing in other climes, but when one considers the 
traditions and antecedents of this government, some of 
its acts are shocking. One glaring instance of this polit- 
ical immorality existed in Hawaii for years in the shape 
of a system of contract labor, with penal enforcement, 
which differed little from Southern slaver}-. They will 
tell you down there that this labor was necessary for the 
development of the island — that sugar could not be pro- 
duced without it, and that without sugar the islands 
would never have been rich. And what they tell you is 
perfectly true. For sugar the contract-bound Chinese 
and Japanese were necessary, and for the commercial 
prosperity of the islands there must be sugar. I believe 
that the Southern owners of cotton plantations pleaded a 
similar necessity for almost a hundred years. 

The contract laborer is a wage-slave. For a long 
time he had no name, being known only by a number, 
like a convict, until public opinion forced a change. His 
contract was penally enforced, and if he ran away he was 



HAWAII NEI 31 

recaptured and brought back and forced to serve out his 
time. The only difference between this slavery and that 
of the South is that the Hawaiian slaves are paid a certain 
wage, and that the consuls look after the rights of their 
countrymen when abuses become too flagrant. There is, 
too, a suggestion of free-will in the fact that the Orientals 
are supposed to bind themselves willingly in their own 
countries. But there are on the island of Hawaii whole 
villages of fugitive laborers, hidden in inaccessible places 
in the mountains — camps whither other laborers flee, 
somewhat as they did to the Dismal Swamp. 

It is something of a shock to the calloused Westerner 
to find a government almost entirely composed of the 
thin, cool New England blood — the blood of Phillips 
and of Garrison — so calmly determining that the labor 
the country needs must be given it. If the kings had 
done it, there would have been no surprise — they 
knew no better; but these political sons of priestly 
sires, who had overturned a government because they 
believed in the equality of all men — how could they 
reconcile it with their consciences? It seems almost as 
though in their anxiety to instruct the natives, the mis- 
sionaries had forgotten to teach the Golden Rule to their 
own sons. 

These crimes, O Industry ! were committed in thy 
name, permitted by a government avowedly more reli- 
gious than any other known — in a land where church-bells 
fill the air on Sundays, and business on the Lord's day is 
unknown. Yet a legislative bill to abolish the penal 
enforcement of labor contracts was quietly shelved a few 
months ago. There is one virtue the old Hawaiian legis- 
lature cannot bequeath as a legacy — that of consistency. 



32 HAWAII NEI 

After annexation had become a fact, the republic of 
Hawaii dated back several labor contracts, under which a 
few hundred more laborers were brought into the country. 
There is something about this clinging to the letter of the 
law, without regard for its spirit, that would be ludicrous 
if it were not sad, considering that every member of the 
late government was of missionary extraction or a devoted 
and zealous worshiper at the big stone church around 
the corner. 

Another case: The republic of Hawaii did a thing that 
only France has ever dared do — it licensed prostitution. 
This missionary government, these men of churchly tradi- 
tions, had the courage to stand up and look the evil in 
the face, as they do in Paris. It takes the breath away — 
this sudden transition from Puritanism to Parisianism. 
The law is that the women of the half-world who are 
examined and registered according to its provisions, and 
who have paid the fees it prescribes, shall not be inter- 
fered with in the conduct and extension of their business. 
It is practically a legal recognition of the social evil. To 
cap the climax, the republic christened this legislation 
"the act to mitigate the evils of prostitution." In the 
islands the members of the government speak of it only 
as "the act to mitigate." It is a long time before 
strangers know what is meant by the misleading phrase. 
At first blush, it seems as though an act to mitigate must 
certainly be a wise and good thing, as anything that can 
be mitigated should be. When the full meaning and 
title of the law break on one for the first time, it is in 
the nature of a shock, and one closes the statute-book 
with a bang, the juxtaposition of sanctity and worldly 
wisdom is so startling. 



HAWAII NEI 3$ 

To be consistent in their desire to ' ( mitigate ' ' evils, 
the Hawaiian government should have recognized that 
wherever there is a large Chinese population there will 
always be opium. It might have put a heavy import 
duty on the drug, and so regulated its entrance to the 
republic, simultaneously discouraging the crime of smug- 
gling and reaping the financial benefit, instead of having 
the profit go to private parties, some of them of decided 
respectability, but still smugglers. But in this respect 
the Hawaiian republic stood firm. It would not lay a 
duty on opium — never. It was one of the chief griev- 
ances of the missionaries against Liliuokalani that she 
was said to be in favor of admitting opium. They could 
find it in their hearts to license prostitution, but never the 
importation of opium. 

The same rule was applied to the selling of liquors. 
The making of native gin is prohibited, and it is exceed- 
ingly difficult to get a license for the selling of liquor, 
especially in the country. In Honolulu there are several 
saloons, but the government evidently did not think that 
these privileges should be extended to the rural districts. 
In Hilo one cannot have a glass of wine at table, but is 
escorted down a crooked passage to a room with drawn 
blinds, to have a glass of claret and water. The abso- 
lute prohibition of liquors, except in certain favored dis- 
tricts, is about as successful in the islands as it has been 
elsewhere. 

For these reasons, and others in the same line, the 
death of the Hawaiian republic was unregretted save by 
its office-holders. They will regret it still more when the 
practical politician sails over from the main land and sets 
them an example of how local politics is done. But it is 



34 HAWAII NEI 

doubtful if even these gentlemen, learned in ward politics, 
can teach the Hawaiian politician much about skillful ma- 
nipulation, or can instruct him in the gentle art of how to 
leave large portions of the population unrepresented. 




a 

8 
u 



HAWAII NEI 35 



CHAPTER IV 

THE AMERICAN COLONY 

Through the years Honolulu has been far-famed for 
hospitality, and if its people are growing a little more 
cautious now, and do not fall upon the neck of every 
stranger as he comes down the gangplank, it is because 
the wings of their faith have been clipped and their 
hospitality sometimes abused. Nowadays a letter of 
introduction or two will facilitate the stranger's entrance 
to the very pleasant inner social circle of Honolulu, about 
which the rest of the place revolves. Every year, of 
course, the city becomes less provincial, and under 
American rule the change will unhappily be accelerated. 
Increased immigration must destroy, in a measure, the 
pleasant neighborly air, and Honolulu, like everything 
else, will have to pay the penalty of wealth and greatness. 
The Americans in Honolulu are not like any other 
Americans in the tropics. One hears much of the 
enervating climate and sees its effects among the women, 
but the men are a busy, bustling lot, and show strongly 
their New England ancestry. The business day begins 
at eight o'clock and lasts until five, when the city's com- 
merce suddenly runs down and stops with a bang. In 
Mexico, where it is infinitely cooler and more invigo- 
rating, everybody takes a siesta between twelve and two; 
but that is a Latin idea, and the Hawaiians by adoption 



36 HAWAII NEI 

have never even thought of such a thing. Business is 
lively, and the streets are full of animation. Bicycles 
dart about, and there is a stock-board and other feverish 
importations. At eight o'clock the carriages come down 
the Waikiki road. They are the private conveyances of 
the gentlemen who live at this delightful suburb-by-the- 
sea. Their wives drive them, and after the head of the 
house has been dropped at his office, the lady driver goes 
to the market and makes her purchases for the day. 
Drivers for private carriages have scarcely obtained a 
foothold in Honolulu, and even wives of millionaires 
drive themselves. Sometimes the stableman is pressed 
into service, but liveries, except for the servants of lega- 
tions, have scarcely been known. The Princess Kaiulani 
drives sometimes with a footman up behind, but this is 
an innovation which has won no popularity, and is hardly 
suited to this land. Kaiulani' s footman, secure behind 
his mistress, bows to his friends as he passes them on the 
road to Waikiki, from which one can see that the idea of 
the impassive flunkey has not taken deep root in this 
land of smiles and glittering teeth. 

The American women complain much of the climate 
and its enervating effects. The chief trouble with them 
is lack of exercise. They hate to walk, since exertion 
means perspiration, and the hack habit is at the root of 
their ill-health. To be sure, there are street-cars, but 
these run in three directions only, and are many minutes 
apart. Besides, the ban is laid upon them, and riding in 
them means social outlawry. They are patronized by 
natives, Orientals, and strangers. The visitor has an 
advantage in that. He may ride in these go-as-you-please 
conveyances, and plead ignorance of the social law. An 



HAWAII NEI 2>7 

electric transportation company will some day bind all the 
suburbs to the city, and will add white patronage to the 
native. Unfortunately, the same company will probably 
erect its hideous poles over the Pali, and then one of the 
most beautiful views in the world will be destroyed. 

The women of the wealthier classes, and even of the 
middle classes — for most of the Americans in the islands 
are well-to-do — give up their days to dolce far niente. It 
is a place of many servants, a fashion introduced by the 
English who came by way of India and Japan, where 
servants are plentiful as flies. The great numbers of 
Orientals fostered the custom, and now it is a necessity. 
People of the middle class who would have a maid-of-all- 
work at home, or two servants at the most, have four and 
five in the islands. Any modest establishment has its 
Japanese nurse, if there be a young child, and two, if there 
be several children. There is a cook, either Chinese or 
Japanese, and a waiter of the same nationality. Often 
the waitress is Japanese; and the picturesque figure, in its 
dainty kimono, the noiseless footfall, and the constant 
attention are pleasant in the extreme. An outside man 
is kept to look after the garden, the horses, and the bath- 
house. 

Most of the house-servants are Orientals. The natives 
do not work for the whites to any great extent. Wealthy 
Hawaiian families have old retainers of their own blood, 
and Caucasian servants are seldom seen. Unskilled labor 
is almost entirely performed by the men of darker skin. 
With such a colony of dependents, one might expect 
wages to be low, but they are not. Few house-servants 
receive less than four dollars a week, and an average of 
sixteen dollars for four servants is not at all exorbitant. 



38 HAWAII NEI 

The little serving colony lives in small detached buildings 
in the grounds, after the style of plantations in the South- 
ern States. It is a pleasant, patriarchal mode of life, and 
the big baths of stone or marble, sunk in the grounds 
and screened by trees, with the shaded lanais, where meals 
are spread in dry weather and where the five o'clock tea- 
table gathers a crowd of guests, combine the pleasures of 
the Orient and the Occident. 

It is well that the American colony is sufficient unto 
itself, inasmuch as diversions from the outside are few and 
far between. There are fragmentary theatrical perform- 
ances, delightful dinners and luncheons, and sometimes 
small house-dances. Card-parties are not in much favor. 
The mosquitoes are such a plague, especially after night- 
fall, that it would require a philosopher to keep his mind 
on a whist game and pursue these blood-drinking pests 
at the same time. 

I always wonder when I hear the hackneyed phrase, 
"Paradise of the Pacific," if the speaker has ever been 
to Hawaii. It may well have been a paradise before the 
mosquitoes came — imported, like all the bad things. 
But now they make living one long struggle. They are 
clever mosquitoes, and they have divided the twenty-four 
hours into day and night watches. Those that skirmish 
by daylight are bad enough, but their fellows of the 
evening are infinitely worse. They serenade gently, bite 
unmercifully, and go away only to pilot countless millions 
of their kind through some private entrance to your 
"mosquito-proof" room. The only remedies that prevail 
against them are so ill-smelling that the mosquitoes are 
preferable. 

Dinner in Honolulu is not at all like dinner on the 



HAWAII NEI 39 

mainland. The only thing conventional about it is the 
dress. After all the guests are announced and before 
dinner is served, a servant, or perhaps the hostess, 
passes about the drawing-room, her arms full of let's, 
which are long garlands of stemless flowers, strung on 
threads and ready to be knotted at the back of the neck 
in fragrant wreaths. Each guest chooses a garland suited 
to toilette or complexion. Invitations to a dinner are 
always invitations to attend a luau, and the modern feast 
is modeled after the old ones at which the Hawaiians, 
from king to lowest peasant, made merry. 

The tables are almost entirely covered with ferns and 
garlands of maile, the fragrant vine that is the Hawaiian 
smilax. Lets of waxen pomeria, of bright golden ilimas, 
and of carnations, red, pink, and white, are laid among 
the green. Calabashes of polished cocoanut-shells, small 
gourds, or wooden bowls of the brilliantly polished koa, are 
at each place, for poi } generally the prized pink poi, is 
served at all these ceremonious affairs. Other dishes are 
served in courses much as they would be at home, except 
that baked taro is among the vegetables, the delightful 
alligator-pear is probably the salad, the fish is steamed in 
^'-leaves and served in its leafy covering, and there is an 
abundance of island fruit. The wines are all imported. 
Beer is very generally drunk in Honolulu, and the natives 
are particularly fond of it. The government has prohib- 
ited the manufacture of native gin, and beer has almost 
usurped its place in the affection of the common people. 
Imported gin is drunk by the natives, to their own great 
detriment, and gin cocktails are served in American 
homes more frequently than anything else. At all 
modern laaus there are tables and chairs. The old days, 



4-0 HAWAII NEI 

when the merrymakers sat on mats and the viands were 
served on the floor, are past Even at Liliuokalani's 
luaus, the guests sit on chairs and eat from tables, and 
the common calabash has taken a fine new satin finish, 
and is full of photographs in the best room. The luau 
has been Americanized. Only once in the island of 
Hawaii did I see a native luau of pristine simplicity. 
The feast was in honor of an American whose unfailing 
kindness to the natives has won him a wide regard. 
Everything was primitive as possible, and the poi in the 
great koa calabash was common property. There was 
mullet steamed in //-leaves; a hi, dried fish; ina, a seaweed 
condiment; olope, oysters; aki, liver; hoolua, roast pork 
that had been cooking for a day and a night; and kalua, 
pork that had been roasted for an hour or two All this 
was put on the table at once. I fear that I enjoyed the 
fruit and the soft, green cocoanuts scooped out of the 
shell with a spoon, more than I did the elaborate "made 
dishes. ' ' One must go a long way from Honolulu to find 
such a feast. In the city they are always spoiled by some 
significant intrusion of the new. 

The wealthy Hawaiian often gives a hula in honor of 
some noted visitor. People of standing attend these 
affairs, though the hula is frowned upon by the American 
women whose word is the cachet to the best Honolulu 
society. American men visitors are not ostracized for 
going to these native ballets, but American women can- 
not afford to do it, so rigorously is the dance condemned 
in the best American circles. The Hawaiians, however, 
have their own standards. It was not a week after the 
raising of the American flag, that the heart-broken 
Kaiulani was at a hula given by a prominent Hawaiian 



HAWAII NEI 41 

lady. The hu /^-dancers wore skirts and anklets only. 
From the waist up their bodies were bare, except for the 
leis of maile, and the ill-smelling ylang -ylang that they 
wore. American men were there, and the Princess, for 
all her English schooling, seemed to think nothing of it. 
That is where comes in the wide difference between the 
civilizations. The Princess went and applauded, and 
thought no harm. It is the old non-moral idea. 

The government has tried very hard to abolish hula 
dancing. Hulas, in the altogether, are expressly for- 
bidden, and the law is enforced; but I am told that 
American men, passing through Honolulu on their way 
to the East, are often edified with one of the dances as 
they were in Kalakaua's time. On steamer nights the 
sound of the calabash, beaten as a drum, comes faintly 
from distant places in the direction of Waikiki, and also 
from the crooked, crowded section of the town. Thus a 
moral nation helps to lift a non-moral one to higher 
things. 

On moonlight nights most delightful bathing-parties 
are given at the villas of Waikiki. The great amuse- 
ment is not so much dipping in the surf, though every one 
swims like a fish, but canoeing. Many people have their 
own canoes, and there are boats to be hired, with natives 
to guide them. The canoes are built on the old Hawaiian 
model, which could not well be improved upon. Each 
one is hollowed from a single trunk, and I have skimmed 
the surf in a canoe in which the great Kamehameha 
himself went a- voyaging. There is an outrigger of heavy 
wood to give steadiness, and the paddles are huge, flat 
wooden spoons. There are usually two natives to pad- 
dle and one to steer, though some of the Americans 



42 HAWAII XEI 

who live by the water have learned the difficult art of 
steering. It is a most delightful sport, though timid 
people do not enjoy it. It has in it that spice of danger 
which charms. The canoe-riders all wear bathing-suits, 
for it is as wet inside the boat as outside. Unless the 
canoe is extraordinarily large, not more than two passen- 
gers who do not work can be carried. As a conse- 
quence, some of the ladies at Waikiki have learned to be 
expert oarswomen. 

The canoe is pushed off from the shelving shore and 
paddled out toward the reef, over which the tide rolls in 
big breakers, the bigger the better. Too much wind 
blowing off shore spoils the sport, as it prevents the 
canoe from attaining sufficient momentum. All hands 
paddle going out, and presently, about a quarter of a 
mile from shore, the rowers turn the canoe, and wait for 
a huge roller. Sometimes when the surf runs high, even 
the outward-going is exciting. The canoe goes over big 
incoming breakers, and drops squarely down to the level 
water with something of the shock of the chutes. Two 
or three rollers may pass the canoe before one is selected. 
It is chosen far out, and the helmsman gives the signal, 
" Hoi ! hoi!''' which means to paddle like mad The 
rowers bend to the paddles, and the firm, quick strokes, 
send the canoe bounding forward while the motion thrills 
the bark as the wind thrilled it long ago, when it was a 
young tree in the forest. All this effort is to give the 
boat sufficient momentum to keep up with the wave when 
the latter shall have finally caught up with its freight. 
If the boat is not going fast enough, the breaker over- 
whelms it and passes on, leaving the canoe swamped and 
half-full of water, or, perhaps, capsizing it in spite of the 



HAWAII NEI 43 

outrigger. To be in a careening boat with a heavy out- 
rigger that has a way of knocking innocent people on 
the head is not agreeable, nor is it fun to have to swim in 
with the waterlogged canoe, sometimes a task of several 
hours. Those who cannot swim must sit in the canoe 
and add their weight to that of the water. But if the 
canoe is going fast enough, none of these disagreeable 
contingencies occur. The wave, fresh from its victorious 
fight with the reef, rises behind in a great green trans- 
lucent wall, curling white at the top, as though to show 
its teeth. From far below it, you look up into it fasci- 
nated. There is a moment of breathless suspense, and 
then the canoe is lifted up and flung forward with incred- 
ible speed. It is like sliding downhill over water instead 
of land, and there is all the fancied pleasure of drowning 
with none of its pangs. It is one long toboggan to the 
shore. Once or twice, if the paddlers with their wonder- 
fully sympathetic water-sense feel the boat slackening, 
they give a vigorous push or two and the canoe is again 
coasting down the wave. In front, where the canoe cuts 
the water, a blinding sheet of spray is thrown upward 
and backward, and the two cowcatcher seats are all 
afloat. But the steersman has no sinecure. With his 
paddle he must guide this long canoe, which is not an 
easy task, considering that the wave has several motions, 
and does not travel in a straight line. If he feels a rotary 
motion inside the circling water, he must correct it with 
his paddle. He is obliged to shift the paddle from side 
to side of the boat, and he must do it with swiftness and 
certainty. A second's indecision on his part would cap- 
size the canoe. Often he clutches his paddle with both 
hands and bends all his weight to keep the canoe from 



44 HAWAII NEI 

swerving in this maelstrom of waters. Sometimes the 
rowers, feeling that the wave is too strong for the single 
paddle, lend their oars to counteract the oblique motion 
of the water. 

Borne on irresistibly, the canoe is carried to the shore, 
and then the paddlers bend to their task once more, and 
the exhilarating run is made over again. The enjoyment 
is heightened when there are three or four canoes out, all 
in experienced hands. They race on every incoming 
wave, and as the wave does not run at the same speed in 
all places, there is a fair chance for one canoe to shoot in 
ahead of the others. If the wave dies out at one point, 
or if one of the canoes is left in the rear, a derisive shout 
goes up from the rest. This is sea-racing in a new form, 
with nature to do the work. 

You can have anything you want in Hawaii, and if 
you live in an equable land of perpetual summer it is 
your own fault. You can take your choice of simmer- 
ing by the seashore, where it is always June, or you can 
climb a mountain and meet vigorous December. These 
mountain pilgrimages are growing in favor. At present 
there is but one hotel at any considerable altitude, but in 
time there will be mountain hostelries for those who love 
frost. Even winter is within reach in this most indulgent 
land. 

Sometimes a drive is planned to the Pali, or a coach- 
ing party goes around the cool precipice and down to one 
of the country places on the windward side of Oahu. 
House-parties are given at country places, with pig- 
hunting or wild-goat or dove shooting for diversion. 
There are yachts and excellent sailing, and exciting shark 
hunts at times. All things are practicable in the open 



HAWAII NEI 45 

air. Houses are built with verandas, closed on three 
sides. The fourth side is open, with Japanese shades to 
keep out wind or sun. The constant trade-winds come 
to cool the lanais, and the life there is very pleasant. 
The lanai is sometimes an arbor, separated from the 
house and covered with the kau-tree, which has broad 
leaves and gives as good shelter as a grape-vine. 

Perhaps it is the open lanai life that makes the popu- 
lar interest in every one's affairs so great. From the 
house with the tin lions to the aisle of royal palms with 
their green foliage and gray stems, all secrets are common 
property. Who went to the last hula y and who drank 
too much at the luau, are matters of common concern. 
A cable and the big affairs of the world to occupy mind 
and eye and active tongue will make the social life of 
Honolulu and Waikiki, that dream city by the sea, even 
more delightful than it is now. 



46 HAWAII NEI 



CHAPTER V 

NATIVE LIVING 

There are not left in Honolulu a half-dozen grass 
houses, and those that remain are mere curiosities on rich 
men's grounds. One charming relic on the Macfarlane 
place, at Waikiki, has a history, and one on the grounds 
of Minister Damon, at Moana Lua, is furnished in the old 
fashion. They are oblong, steep-roofed dwellings, and 
their interiors show that the Hawaiians were sybaritic 
savages, and knew what comfort was. Fine braided 
mats, soft as meadow-grass, make the carpets. One half 
the room is a raised platform, and over a layer of rushes 
are many mattings of pandanus leaves and grass. This 
was the bed, a soft and luxurious couch, big enough for 
a dozen persons. There are massive seats of cocoanut 
stumps, ancient spears, carted of wood and tipped with 
bone, an old piece of furniture from a heiau, which looks 
like a chopping-block, and has horrid associations, being 
stained with blood and time. 

I asked mournfully where all the brown huts of the 
story-books, that clustered so prettily under the palms 
and melted so charmingly into the landscape, had gone, 
and was told that the grass grew no more, but that is a 
fiction. In truth, the grass house cost a deal of labor. 
There were many ceremonies connected with its incep- 
tion, and the work of thatching the straw, to make it 




V 



HAWAII NEI 47 

impervious against the persistent floods that alone mark 
the Hawaiian winter, was a labor of many hands for many- 
days. With the white man came many deadly pests. 
Foreign ships brought mosquitoes as well as centipedes 
and scorpions. The native does not mind the mosquito, 
and the mosquito does not find the native toothsome; 
but the scorpions and centipedes are no respecters of 
person, and would as lief sting a brown heel as a white 
one. The floorless grass houses were admirable hiding- 
places, and cozy breeding-grounds for insects, and the 
fact had much to do with their abandonment. The 
natives, who recover easily from trouble and losses, 
settled quite comfortably into houses of frame, with roofs 
of corrugated iron. The newer dwellings are not beauti- 
ful, but they are more comfortable than houses on the 
ground, damp in the winter floods, infested with creeping 
things, and so inflammable that they went up like rockets 
at the first touch of a match. 

The old hillside kuleanas, where the natives used to 
live, and which they were free to leave if they wished to 
enter the service of another chief, are mostly abandoned 
now, and the grass houses that stood within the incis- 
ures, have returned to the earth from which they came, 
or were burned down long ago. Only on the picturesque 
lee shore of the island of Hawaii does the grass house 
still nestle under the palms. Even here, where tradition 
is most tenacious, they are not rebuilt. When one goes 
up in smoke, the house that replaces it is a claptrap of 
boards and iron. Like the hoary cocoanut-groves, the 
grass house is doomed. Few people know that the 
cocoanut-groves are rapidly passing. When the process 
of extinction shall have been completed, one of the most 



48 HAWAII XEI 

beautiful and picturesque features of the island landscape 
will have been obliterated. Lately, awakened to the 
rapid diminution of the coco-palm, and its wanton 
destruction, the islanders have begun to plant new 
groves, but it will be a hundred years before these can 
replace the old. The cocoanuts are exceedingly slow of 
growth, and the present trees were as tall as they are 
now when the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of the 
natives of to-day were alive. The oldest men of the 
villages will tell you that they have it from their grand- 
fathers that these trees were waving their high tops in 
the wind when they were boys. Without the grass 
house and the garments of kapa, it is but hah" Hawaii; 
with the cocoanuts gone, it would not be Hawaii at all. 

Inside, the little frame houses are quite comfortable. 
The natives are surprisingly clean. In a country where 
it showers every cay. where clothes are few and baths fre- 
quent, there is no excuse for dirt. But these natives are 
so much cleaner than the people of our own slums that 
we, who came to patronize, remain to pattern. The 
Hawaiians wear no superfluous clothing, and their cotton 
garments are always immaculate, though their feet are 
sometimes bare and often dusty. 

Only the lowest class goes unshod. The /^-women 
on the street go barefooted It is evidently considered a 
reflection on social standing, and every one aims to be 
shod. As far as beauty goes, the slender brown feet 
need no covering. Their feet are well formed, and civili- 
zation's shoes have not been worn long enough to deform 
them. The Kanakas walk with a swinging stride that 
tells of long years of perfect freedom. Their straight 
backs are a legacy from generations who sat on the floor. 



HAWAII NEI 49 

The women, in particular, have a walk that marks them 
the whole world over. There is a swing of hip and 
shoulder that is unique and inimitable. A stately- 
Hawaiian wahine in a loose holoku, swinging down the 
street and managing to extract a considerable amount of 
grace and dignity from her stiff and rustling garment, is 
indeed a wonder. 

Racially, the Hawaiians are closely connected with the 
Samoans and the aborigines of New Zealand, and there 
are many affinities of language, religion, and legend that 
connect them. There are striking physical resemblances, 
as well as these spiritual ones. There are old tales, his- 
tories intoned, which tell of long voyages by sea, and it 
is supposed that many centuries ago there was a chain of 
small islands between Hawaii and the archipelagoes of the 
South Seas, by which the navigators were guided. With 
the disappearance of these sea-marks, the bold voyages 
were discontinued, and race differences, engendered by 
climate and situation, began to appear. 

The full-blooded Hawaiians, now becoming so scarce 
that it is difficult to study the type, are distinguished by 
that slight overfullness of the lips and broadening of the 
nose characteristic of the Polynesian peoples. The skin 
is brown, but not much darker than that of a Spaniard, 
and not nearly as dark as the Mexican — never dark 
enough to be mistaken for Ethiopian. It shows the 
grossest ignorance when the Hawaiians are called "nig- 
gers," as they sometimes are. The effect of the constant 
sunshine is to make all brunette skins much darker. In 
a few generations, white men, transplanted to the islands 
and not allowed to leave them, would be quite as dark as 
the natives themselves. I recall, in particular, the case 



5<3 HAWAII NEI 

of a handsome young woman of English parentage, who 
was born in the islands less than thirty years ago, and 
who has never been away from them. Though naturally 
fair, with blue eyes and dark hair, she is so dark that she 
is frequently mistaken for a half-white. Americans should 
be chary how they apply terms of contempt to the natives. 
Their own descendants in the islands may be quite as 
dark. Heretofore the color-line has not been drawn in 
the islands. It will be one of the most grievous conse- 
quences flowing from annexation if it is to be drawn in 
the future. Already the natives are sensitive about the 
matter as never before. 

In years gone by, when the first white men came 
to the islands, and the land was under the rule of the 
dusky princes of the sovereign race, there could be no 
question of color. If there was any color-line at all, the 
brown man was above the salt and the paleface below. 
In those days, the most stiff-backed republican was glad 
to bow the knee — anything to be allowed to live in this 
land where much money was to be made. When the 
white men took the government, the change was slight. 
Too many white men had married native women, and the 
blood was too thoroughly mixed for immediate reprisals. 
Many of the best foreign families of the islands are inter- 
married with natives, and one has only to see the graceful, 
handsome Hawaiian women and to meet them in their 
homes to understand their charm. Many of the native 
families were rich in lands, and had social prestige and 
power. They were learned in matters of precedence, 
and the Hawaiian-born Americans are sticklers for prece- 
dent. For instance, President Dole, on his official trip to 
America, had with him as factotum and aide a man who 



HAWAII NEI 51 

went with Queen Kapiolani and Princess Liliuokalani to 
the Victorian Jubilee. He was not sure of the President's 
name, and registered him as "Sandford B. Dole," instead 
of "Sanford B. Dole," but he is considered the most emi- 
nent authority in court etiquette and state procedure on 
the islands. 

It is amusing to go to the native church at Honolulu 
and be seated apart from the congregation, in a raised sec- 
tion at the back of the house. Other Americans are put 
in this same reserved space, and as the congregation files 
out one is inspected, respectfully but critically. It is a 
new experience for the lordly white and a salutary one. 
We are not used to having the color-line drawn in that 
way. I wished that some of my friends who say ' ' nig- 
ger," and decline to sit at table with a colored man, or 
next a Chinese in the train, might have been there. 

Perhaps it is this feeling of equality that gives the 
Hawaiians their dashing air. It will be a great pity if 
annexation or restrictions on the franchise combine to set 
these people off from their neighbors. It would be grave 
injustice to the half-whites who are educated, refined, and 
handsome — much the best half-castes I have ever seen. 
They have not the vicious or indolent qualities which 
usually distinguish the cross in the blood. They have not 
developed the weaknesses of both parents, as is too often 
the case in other countries. Instead, they are big and 
fine -looking, industrious, clever, and more prolific than 
the native Hawaiians. They bid fair to last. It is an 
odd thing that the least admixture of blood turns the 
heavy black hair of the Hawaiian, which is naturally 
straight, into curls and kinks. It does not seem to mat- 
ter what the cross is. The Gilbert Islanders, who came 



52 HAWAII NEI 

to Hawaii in considerable numbers, have curly hair, and 
some observers attempt to account for the phenomena in 
that way, but it is odd that the children of Chinese and 
Hawaiian parents have curly hair that could come from 
neither side of the house. Another peculiarity of the 
Hawaiian-Chinese children is their light color. Strangely 
enough, the Oriental - Polynesian mixture produces a 
fairer skin than the admixture of Polynesian and Cau- 
casian blood. Such queer pranks Nature plays! 

The Hawaiian women who have married Americans 
are extremely jealous of their prerogatives, and their 
husbands are jealous of them as well. New settlers will 
perhaps be squeamish as to differences of birth for a little 
while, but they will soon find that these women are as 
well-born, well-bred, and well-educated as themselves, 
and the prejudice must wear away as the dark skin 
becomes an old story. 

The real danger to the Hawaiian race lies in quite 
another direction. The Hawaiians are threatened with 
extinction on two sides. The upper-class women seldom 
marry men of their own blood, but almost always whites. 
The lower-class women become the wives of Chinese. 
Thus the purity of blood is threatened in two directions. 
Even the ruling family was not of pure strain. The chiefs 
were so superior to the common people in size, and so 
much handsomer, that it seemed as if they must be of a 
different race. Away back in the misty years of their 
sagas, it is related how strange vessels were wrecked on 
their coasts. From the descriptions of the shipwrecked 
survivors, and from ships that went astray and were 
never heard from, historians conjecture that the wrecks 
were of Japanese junks and Spanish ships, blown out 



HAWAII NEI 53 

of their courses. The survivors intermarried with the 
families of chiefs, and became the progenitors of a light- 
colored race. 

The popularity of the Chinese as husbands is due to 
the fact that they are excellent providers, which the 
native Hawaiians are not. Since there are no penalties 
attached, these marriages are freely made. The only 
trouble is that the Chinese husbands who become wealthy 
have an unpleasant way of going home to China to die, 
abandoning their Hawaiian families for the sake of their 
Cantonese wives and their Cantonese ancestors. But as 
the Chinese husband usually leaves his island family well 
provided for, and as Hawaiian wives, like many in more 
cultured lands, are sometimes mercenary, it does not 
matter particularly. There has never been the slightest 
prejudice in the islands against admixtures of Chinese 
blood. If the family have money enough and demean 
itself well, it is not asked whether the head of the house 
wore queue or malo. There is the well-known and 
somewhat hackneyed case of the Honolulu family whose 
progenitor was a Chinese, and whose portrait, in a celestial 
blouse, is the most prominent ornament of the drawing- 
room where young Caucasians with shoulder-straps go 
to pay court to the charming and amiable daughters of this 
somewhat mixed house. Other examples of this social 
tolerance are found at Hilo, where many of the " first 
families" have the Chinese tang in the blood. Occa- 
sionally a child occurs with an almond eye and eyelids 
inclined to pucker at the scanty corners, but ordinarily 
the children look like other people, and are received 
wholly on their merits and bank accounts. 

Clothing and gin well-nigh proved fatal to the natives. 



54 HAWAII NEI 

They succumb easily to pulmonary diseases, but are 
fairly hardy and long-lived. Their small families and 
high death-rate are the direct cause of the decline in the 
native population. The natives are much more industri- 
ous than we give them credit for. Nearly all of them 
work. They cultivate taro, they clerk in stores, they 
fish, they row boats, and they guide canoes through the 
surf for the pleasure of visitors to the islands. I recol- 
lect but one Hawaiian beggar in all Honolulu, and he 
was a blind man who had been a court official. He 
played the jew's-harp excruciatingly. To give him alms 
was a real pleasure; for while he stopped playing to put 
the coin away one might get out of hearing. One beg- 
gar in a city of thirty thousand people, struck me as a 
real tribute to a lazy population. 

The industry of the natives is largely a habit con- 
tracted from the whites. In the old days amusement was 
the thing and work was only secondary. The taro-pztches 
yielded abundantly, a field of forty square feet supporting 
a family of six. But after the taro was dug, nobody 
thought of planting more until the stock was exhausted. 
With the delightful hospitality that prevailed among the 
natives, the family visited some of its neighbors until the 
taro had grown again. The children ate wherever they 
happened to be, and the easy-going parents never even 
counted their broods at night to see if all were at home. 
But American methods put a stop to all this Arcadian 
vagabondage. The native found himself caught up in 
civilization's big wheel, which goes ever faster and faster, 
and now he works from early morning to late at night, 
with little time for his swimming and sporting in the surf, 
and less time for flower-weaving and the feasts and jollity 



HAWAII NEI 55 

that he loves. Native boat-crews work until the perspi- 
ration flows down their faces, rowing the heavy canoes 
through the surf at the many landings. They are at it 
early and late, at a wage of a dollar a day, and even then 
they are so generous that they invite all the steerage pas- 
sengers who are without provisions to share with them 
their rations of fish and fioi, until frequently their store 
gives out before the end of the voyage, and they must 
do their hard work on empty stomachs. 

And the extreme cheerfulness with which they do their 
work! Life for them is seasoned with smiles. My boat- 
man, Picoi, bending his fine brown back and straining 
his marvelous arms that I may have the joy of riding 
down hill on a breaker, smiles through the sweat that 
drips in his eyes because I call him, "Picoi, good boy." 
He is a revelation of willing service. 

To Caucasian eyes the beauty of the Hawaiian people 
is marred by their tendency to lay on flesh. The stay- 
less women are shapeless heaps of fat, and the men are 
not much better, except that exercise keeps them in 
somewhat better form. But I doubt if such a tendency 
to rotundity would be found in any but a cheerful people. 
They laugh at their work, and they laugh at their play. 
A Cassius face is never seen among them. Everybody is 
round as a pudding, and every face dimples with smiles 
like the bay in a breeze. They are courteous, affable, 
and kindly — polite even to those whom they hate polit- 
ically, and too good-natured to harbor resentment long. 
They are so amiable that their jails are empty. There 
are few malefactors, and the native policemen have 
nothing to do but to grow plump. An occasional arrest 
is made, but rarely for anything more serious than 



56 HAWAII NEI 

disturbing the peace or fast driving. The Hawaiians are 
reckless reinsmen, dashing around corners at breakneck 
speed. Moreover, they drink more than is good for 
them, and then celebrate on the street. But murder is 
almost unknown, and stealing entirely so. The white 
residents of Honolulu never locked their doors until the 
American soldiery arrived. You may leave money in 
full view of a Hawaiian — even a poor one, whose neces- 
sities in other countries would be taken as excuse — and 
it will not be touched. 

Nothing is more indicative of the character of these 
good-natured, overgrown children than their fondness 
for flattery and the sugared things of life. They cannot 
endure criticism, and they will not love their critic, no 
matter how close their interests are to his heart. This 
quality accounts largely for their mistakes in government. 
They would not listen to their friends, and they believed 
their flatterers implicitly. 

They are naturally a religious people, and not nearly 
as superstitious as they are represented to be. They are 
said to believe in ghosts, but I note that they live nearer 
the graves of their dead than we care to do. Once they 
believed that the air was inhabited by unseen things, but 
so did our ancestors at a time so recent that we cannot 
afford to accuse the Hawaiians of superstition on this 
account. 

The Hawaiians are naturally credulous as well, and so 
it happened that they were converted en masse, and built 
churches as uncomplainingly as they had fashioned their 
heathen temples. They were used to being ordered 
about. When the churches were finished they filled 
them — a simple, devout, loving people, silhouetting the 



HAWAII NEI 57 

white walls with a myriad of dark faces. But when their 
government was taken from them, resentment burned 
fiercely behind the placid brown faces. Many of the 
natives deserted the Protestant churches and went to the 
Catholics and the Mormons. The Mormon church has a 
large following in the islands, and almost all its members 
are natives. 

The Hawaiians cling to their simple living. Their 
wants are few, and the unhappy complexity of civilization 
has not yet mastered them. Inside their neatly kept 
houses you will find good furniture — carved four-post 
koa beds that an antiquary would envy — heirlooms in 
^z'-bowls of hard wood, feather kahilis, if the family had 
any connection with a chief by blood or service, and 
perhaps a rare piece of kapa } instead of a counterpane. 
The kapa and the poi calabashes are becoming rare. 
Good prices are obtainable for both articles, and the 
natives are learning that porcelain is cheaper than poi- 
bowls and coverlids than kapa. And so, as with the 
peasantry of other countries, the choice old things are 
disappearing from the cottages. 

Their menu is simpler yet. The main dishes are 
still, as they have been for centuries, fish and poi. Fish 
is plentiful, and the native likes it in any style. He likes 
it raw, and even alive, and it is a curious sight to see him 
eat live shrimps on the coast of Hawaii. He likes his 
fish wrapped in big, cool /z-leaves, and steamed in an 
underground oven. He likes it salted, and he likes it 
particularly with poi, which is his staple, taking the place 
of both bread and potatoes. It is pure starch, and to 
the enormous consumption of it is due, no doubt, much 
of the native rotundity. Poi is hard to prepare, and the 



58 HAWAII NEI 

liking for it is a cultivated taste, which most of the white 
residents of the islands have acquired. It goes with the 
climate, and suits it so well that doctors recommend it as 
a sovereign cure for dyspepsia, and poi flour is even 
exported to this country, to be used for dyspepsia. 
Newcomers take to poi most kindly when mixed with 
milk in a gruel-like concoction, misleadingly called a poi 
cocktail. 

The preparation of poi has fallen on evil days. In 
Honolulu it is made by Chinese almost exclusively. Much 
of it is pounded by machinery, and it is only in remote 
country districts that one may see the /aw-beaters with 
stone trough and pestle, pounding the tough root which 
is their staple of life. The tenderfoot is told by his 
friends of longer residence to see poi made once and he 
will never care to taste it. But it is not true. Most of 
the Chinese who pound poi by hand at the sign of the 
white flag are exceedingly clean. It is hard work, and 
blouses are cut away until there is scarcely anything left 
of them, displaying backs and chests that are networks 
of muscle, laced under a tea-rose skin. The drops of 
perspiration that trickle in little streams, are wiped away 
with towels, and the pestle is occasionally dipped in a 
bucket of clean water. The taro is a light lilac in color, 
and obstinate as molasses candy. The pestle falls with a 
monotonous clangor like a new anvil-chorus. When 
served at table, poi is a light lavender. Pink poi is called 
royal poi, and is prepared from the faro of certain locali- 
ties. It used to be eaten with the fingers, but the imita- 
tive natives now twist it dextrously around forks, and 
only the newcomer, anxious to show his conformity, 
dips in the unaccustomed finger. 



HAWAII NEI 59 

All poi is allowed to ferment slightly before it is 
eaten, and iconoclasts say that it tastes like sour bill- 
sticker's paste, which is a libel. It seems to me that poi 
is almost tasteless, and makes a good background for a 
meal. This universal vegetable takes the place of all 
cereals, vegetables, and fruits to the Hawaiians. They 
care little for the island fruits, and eat less of bananas 
and pineapples than one would expect. They are fond 
of cocoanut-milk, but mangoes and guavas are almost 
untouched by them. Most delicious strawberry-guavas 
grow wild near Hilo, but the natives do not even take 
the trouble to gather them, and our native hackman 
laughed inordinately when we asked him to get some 
for us. 

I dined one night with the family of a Kanaka boat- 
man — the same handsome fellow who stands at the 
water-steps that reminds you of Venice, and whose 
strong arms will ferry you all around the bay in less time 
than it takes to write it. I was invited to come any time, 
but he expected that I would give him notice, and the 
family was dreadfully embarrassed when I dropped in 
unannounced. 

But I did not want an American dinner of fried steak 
and potatoes. I wanted to partake of the usual family 
dinner, and I had to keep my eye on half a dozen chil- 
dren at once, to see that none of them was sent out to 
procure foreign elements for the feast. Presently dinner 
was served, and the shy Hawaiian wife apologized for 
the humble fare. But it was very nice — poi in a huge 
common bowl, as it used to be when the gregarious 
natives ate from the same dish and wore each other's 
clothes, and when leprosy spread unchecked in the land. 



60 HAWAII NEI 

There was also roasted taro — a gray vegetable, cooked 
in //-leaves in the umu, or underground oven, and tasting 
something like sweet potato. The fish was dried and 
salty, but it went excellently with the poi. There was 
also a condiment of seaweed. For dessert was the 
national Hawaiian sweet, a pudding composed of grated 
taro and cocoanut-milk. It was a simple feast, but 
offered with great hospitality, and there was genuine 
pleasure after the first embarrassment had worn away. 
My host talked politics with an understanding of his sub- 
ject possessed by few Americans of corresponding station. 
After dinner I was shown his pardon, signed by the 
President of Hawaii, and sealed with the great seal. It 
granted amnesty to my friend for his part in one of the 
opera-boufife revolutions and restored him to a citizenship 
that he would not accept. 

From this humble peasantry up to the ex-queen there 
is a wide diversity of living. Liliuokalani has money, 
and keeps quite a retinue within her beautiful grounds at 
Washington Place. This house is her private residence, 
coming to her from her husband. It is a big fine build- 
ing, in the old Southern plantation style, with a veranda 
all around, and pillars that suggest the White House. 
Inside is a wide vestibule that runs frankly to the kitchen, 
with square, rather plain rooms at either side. They 
are sparsely finished, except for the big feathered kahilis 
which shadow the corners. These kahilis are immense 
fly-brushes, mounted on hard wood, often inlaid with 
pearl or ivory. They are doubtless the legitimate 
descendants of the fly-brushes with which retainers used 
to fan sovereigns in years gone by. No one but a chief 
is entitled to have them, though you will find stolen 



HAWAII NEI 6 1 

trophies boldly set out in several drawing-rooms where 
they have no lawful place. 

Ordinarily the queen dines alone, fanned by white 
kahilis, wielded by pretty native girls. Her tastes are 
simple, and have not been changed by travel or years of 
exile. She is still an ardent lover of poi and of fish 
au naturel, and she drinks cocoanut - milk dextrously 
from the shell. She is the only person I have seen who 
can eat a mango gracefully. The queen still wears the 
national holoku with extreme grace. She has a good 
figure, and of late years an increasing slimness has much 
improved her. Even more than any other woman in 
the islands, she has the upright carriage of the head and 
the sweep of the shoulders that make of each Hawaiian 
woman a very queen. She is exceedingly gracious to 
Americans, but with her former subjects she maintains 
that reserve which is a royal prerogative. 

The menage of Princess Kaiulani at Ainahau (cool 
place), on the road to Waikiki, is much more American- 
ized. She clings outwardly to Hawaiian customs, and 
seldom appears without a royal lei of oo feathers, but her 
household is Caucasian. Her ladies-in-waiting are not 
Hawaiian, and her thoughts and tastes run in new lines. 
Her drawing-room is entirely modern, with its photo- 
graphs and fanteiiils, and might be in Belgravia or Fifth 
Avenue. The feather kahilis that adorn the corners are 
the only reminders of barbaric royalty. Certainly there 
is nothing in the aquiline features of Kaiulani to suggest 
her broad-nosed ancestry. Had she ascended her ances- 
tral throne, the old arguments against island royalty would 
have had to be shelved and a new set devised. This 
refined and gently bred girl is a model of the feminine 



62 HAWAII NEI 

graces and proprieties. Only a royal temper and a will 
of her own that brooks no contradiction have descended 
to this daughter of fiery chiefs. 

It is a far cry from Kalakaua, with his houses of 
revelry and his seraglio of kula-da.ncers and lomi-lomi 
women, to this delicately sublimated niece of his. The 
question of Hawaiian morality is still a hotly disputed 
one. There are Americans in Honolulu who declare to 
you that the Hawaiian women are without chastity, and 
they point triumphantly to the fact that there is no word 
in their language to express this virtue. 

And there are other equally reputable American 
men — husbands of Hawaiian wives — before whom these 
critics would not dare to make this remark. The truth 
lies somewhere between the extremes. The Polynesian's 
ideal of morality is far below the Caucasian's. His prac- 
tice is about the same. 



HAWAII NEI 63 



CHAPTER VI 

THE TRANSPLANTED ORIENTAL 

Plantation life in Hawaii, once the real heart of it is 
reached, is like life in the South before 1861. Every- 
body is welcome to see the surface, but few strangers look 
below. It is patriarchal in a way. There is a big house, 
where the high-salaried manager lives, with wide verandas 
and a delightful hospitality, and a little army of soft- 
footed attendants. When it spreads along the country- 
side that the plantation has a visitor, quartets of good- 
looking boys, with sweet native instruments, come to 
serenade and to sing the liquid words and deathly sweet 
tunes of their nativity. Inside the cool and softly-lighted 
house is an office where a big case of guns, always oiled, 
always loaded, leans against the wall. It is the watchful 
preparation against possible riot and murder, but the vis- 
itor is not expected to know or to notice. Nevertheless, 
when you hear a sound in the night on the veranda, or 
when the rising moon, caught in the mango branches, 
gives the effect of a village on fire, you remember those 
guns with a shudder. 

By day you are taken for a horseback-ride in the 
upland cane, over slippery paths to the highlands, where 
the tall cane thrusts out tremulous arms as you pass. 
You hear how many tons each acre yields, and sometimes 
you draw in your breath sharply when you hear — it is 



64 HAWAII NEI 

such a prodigal nature. Perhaps you go to the mill and 
see the cane rushing to its death down the water -flume. 
Mangled, stripped, bleeding, the great canes hurry along, 
urged by the resistless force of the water beneath. At 
the mill is a cascade, and here the canes fall in a heaving 
heap, their jagged ends tangled and protruding, like 
splintered timbers after a railroad wreck. You go inside 
and are conducted from department to department, 
watching the cane in its progress from a crushed, hopeless 
mass, through the black, syrupy stages, to the purification 
of this sticky, viscous, ill-smelling mud, when it emerges 
in the form of pale golden, delightfully clean and deli- 
ciously flavored sugar, sewn into a great bag with two 
alert ears, by a little Japanese woman in a holoku. The 
machinery is all tended by Japanese, too — and you are., 
brought vividly face to face with what the Oriental has 
done in the islands. Voteless these people may be, 
treated as animals and dumb under oppression, but with- 
out their active, lean, brown hands, I doubt if we would 
have considered the islands worth annexing. 

Perhaps the manager will take you through the labor- 
ers' villages, though he will not encourage your desire 
for sociological exploration. The Japanese huts are prob- 
ably nearest to the plantation-house; for the Japanese are 
quick to pick up the ways of Occidental civilization, and 
the managers like to have them under their own eyes, 
where they can watch them the closer. The Chinese vil- 
lage is often far up a hillside, perhaps a mile or two from 
the manager's house. The coolies are usually so quiet 
and well-behaved that they can be safely trusted. 

The villages are commonplace enough — rows and 
rows of houses all alike, so that there can be no quarrel 



HAWAII NEI 65 

as to domicile. There are few comforts, but the houses 
are as good as Hawaiian houses of the lower class. There 
is a hot little veranda for each, but as laborers are obliged 
to put in ten hours a day, there is little chance to sit on 
them. Near by is the plantation store, where the labor- 
ers are compelled to buy, and where prices, I regret to 
say, are usually far too high. Through this store much 
of the wage of the laborers goes back to the plantation. 

Once watch the laborers going to work in the tepid 
early morning, and you will be more reminded of the 
sunny southland than before, with sugar substituted for 
cotton and yellow men for black. The scenes at planta- 
tions which are near Honolulu are not at all those of 
plantations that are remote. Public opinion counts for 
something even in Hawaii. On some plantations regarded 
as models, white lunas (overseers) drive the laborers to 
the field with blacksnakes, and laborers have been kicked 
to death in some sugar-fields. No doubt many of the 
deported laborers are little better than criminals. The 
scourings of the streets, the roughs of Hongkong and 
Canton, sometimes compose a shipload. There have 
been dangerous riots and battles, with picks and shovels 
and clubs, or whatever else happened to be handy. The 
lunas are often drinking men, cross and surly. They 
have almost absolute power over their gangs of men, 
and, worse still, over the women, too. There have been 
bitter complaints from some of the remote plantations, 
especially in the north, and when investigated by the 
labor commissioner, the charges were found to be true. At 
one plantation, the great clock whose slow hands measure 
the working-day was manipulated from the inside, 
with the result that the hours lengthened imperceptibly, 



66 HAWAII NEI 

and the hands were toiling twelve hours a day instead 
of ten. At some plantations the sun always rises at six 
and sets at six for plantation purposes, and a big bell 
booms out the beginning and end of working-hours. 

As in the Southern States, the personality of the man- 
ager who lords it so absolutely over the plantation makes 
all the difference in the world. He is a little czar, and 
holds the power of life and death, almost. The courts 
consult him as to sentences, and if he says that he cannot 
spare the labor of one of his men, the courts will permit 
the contract laborer to serve the time of his sentence on 
the plantation — that is, his days are spent in the cane, 
and his nights in a sort of improvised calaboose. 

There are many kindly men who do not abuse their 
power, and who believe in living and letting others live. 
On one plantation you will find laborers docked for a 
half-day if they are absent for a half-hour from the field, 
and at an adjoining one wages will be gradually increased 
in return for good service, until some of the laborers 
earn a fair stipend. On some plantations every possible 
fine is levied, and sick men are charged for medical 
services, until the wages are stripped down to six dollars 
and a half a month. On others, laborers are cared for 
in a manner almost paternal. And, like the Scriptural 
rain, which falls alike on the just and the unjust, the 
sugar from these unjust plantations tastes quite as sweet 
as that from the others. Worse still, the owners make 
quite as much money. Of course, it is all wrong — a 
system which permits such abuses, and which relies on 
man's humanity to man. Laws to protect the weak are 
not based on the theory of the innate justice of the 
strong. 



HAWAII NEI 67 

It was the realization among the islanders that Uncle 
Sam would regard the contract laborer as an abomina- 
tion in the nostrils of free men — for the Hawaiian 
republic has always had the grace to be ashamed of con- 
tract labor — that hurried so many Oriental coolies across 
the ocean in July and August of 1898, and put every 
tramp-ship under contract. During these last days of 
independence, when annexation was already a fact, but 
had not reached formal ratification, laborers were netted 
like fish along the waterways of China, and were herded 
from the populous districts of Japan. How many of 
them were shanghaied or coerced or deceived, no one 
will ever know or care to inquire. The last official act 
of the Hawaiian republic was the signing of a receipt on 
a human bill of lading. 

Not even Castle Garden could parallel the scenes at 
Honolulu in the days when hundreds of low-class Ori- 
entals, only ten days from home, were landed at the 
quarantine station. Such a hurrying, scurrying, fright- 
ened, jabbering mob as they were. The shipload I saw 
had been jammed, five hundred and forty-six of them, 
on a small tramp steamer, the Kee Lung, with about as 
much food and air and water as a blackbirding expedition 
in the old days gave to its passengers. The laborers 
were caked with dirt, tired, uncertain on their legs, and 
they were driven down the bridge from deep water to the 
bright pink buildings of the quarantine settlement like so 
many sheep. The bridge is six feet wide, perhaps, and 
half a mile long, over coral-reef thinly veiled with sand. 

Women carrying beady-eyed, silent Japanese babies, 
and men with wearing apparel, bedding, and eating uten- 
sils, they stumbled along the long gangplank, their 



68 HAWAII NEI 

wooden shoes making a queer clacking and clattering. 
Men who travel thousands of miles for the privilege of 
earning twelve dollars and a half a month are not 
expected to be opulent, but these carried clean kimonos 
in neat bundles, mats for beds, wooden blocks for pillows, 
and blue bowls for rice. That they were dirty was not 
their fault. Their desire was to be clean ; for as soon as 
the big bath-tubs, eight by ten feet, were shown them, 
they scuttled in in squads of ten with all speed, and then 
was heard a great spattering and splashing, as though a 
million canaries were dashing their wings at once in a 
million bathing-dishes of porcelain. 

There is something pathetic about these cotton-clad 
laborers — the slaves of Hawaii. They bind themselves 
to work in the cane or coffee for three years or more, 
and if they desert, the whole police power of the republic 
is thrown against them. They are captured as fugitive 
slaves were before the war. If they prove repentant, 
they are sent back to the plantation. If they are still 
runaways at heart — and heaven knows there is reason 
enough why they should be — they are sent to ' ' the reef ' 
to work out their sentence, and after that even the stifling 
work among the cane is welcome. It seems odd that the 
fugitive slave law over which men fought and bled forty 
years ago should be in force in a republic at the end of 
the century. 

Of course, there is the world-old argument — that 
these Chinese and Japanese coolies are no better off in 
their own country; that they are too lowly in station even 
to belong to the army, except to be attached as bearers 
and camp-followers, and take the place of government 
mules in the food trains. Very likely this is true. The 



HAWAII NEI 69 

world must be centuries older yet before men will cease 
trying to make two wrongs come out a right. 

The quarantine buildings where these imported labor- 
ers have their first taste of "Western civilization" are 
long, low salmon-pink buildings on a green and sedgy 
island, where the grass turns brown in the salt and the 
high tide almost drowns the settlement. It looks like a 
rose-pink fishing village floating on a looking-glass sea. 

Inside are wonderful ovens, where fifty pounds of 
sulphur are burned at once and great tanks whence no 
germ comes out alive. There are vats for fumigating 
clothing and tanks for purifying bodies. The rule is that 
all steerage passengers must be detained until they have 
been eighteen days from the nearest port. If they make 
a quick passage from Yokohama, there is all the more 
time to stay in the hot, sun-baked yard and the bright 
pink buildings. Medical men presume that disease germs 
that are going to take root will sprout within the eighteen- 
day limit, but there are records of small-pox cases that 
developed the twenty-first day from port. 

Every morning at sunrise the guards send these hun- 
dreds of detained passengers scampering from their beds. 
Sometimes there are twenty-four hundred of them, and 
each one is examined, even the little children, which 
takes until well along in the morning. The examination 
is to determine if any of the dreaded Oriental plagues 
have developed overnight. Later a physician examines 
them as to soundness of wind and limb, for only able- 
bodied men and women are wanted. The poor, scared 
Orientals, unable to speak a word of Hawaiian or English, 
must think it takes a deal of prodding and poking, 
of listening through a stethoscope and feeling of the 



JO HAWAII NEI 

ribs to secure the privilege of earning thirteen dollars a 
month. 

They lodge like cattle. There is 1 o separation of 
women from men — not even at bathing-time. The offi- 
cer in charge of the quarantine station says it would breed 
a riot if he attempted such a thing, and so they sleep in 
one huge room, warm as to temperature, foul as to air, 
but fairly cleanly considering the numbers who lodge 
there. There are tiers of bunks and great areas of bare, 
square beds, with low partitions between them, but no 
passageway. Four or five persons sleep in a single bunk 
by night, and sit tailor-fashion in the gloomy depths of 
the cavernous place by day. It is a fortunate thing that 
the Japanese babies, with their shaven polls and lonesome 
lock behind, or their circular bang around a shaven place 
as big as a dollar, do not cry. If they did, there would 
be no sleep for any one in this vast caravansary. As the 
black, almond eyes peered at me through the half dark 
of the place of beds, it reminded me of a huge rookery 
where birds cluster and jostle and push for place. 

It may breed a riot to separate the sexes, but when 
Hawaii gets into working order as an American territory 
the dozen guards at the house of quarantine will be re- 
enforced so that the entrance of these Orientals into 
Western civilization will be a real entrance. A woman 
doctor and female attendants could do more for these 
Japanese women than a hundred missionary sermons. 

The day I was at quarantine there were seven hundred 
and twenty inmates, fifty of them women. Chinese and 
Japanese were in the same yard, living in a sort of 
armed neutrality. The officers say that a Chinese is a 
gentleman compared with a Jap. The Chinese are 



HAWAII NEI 71 

friendly, civil, and easy to manage — the Japs hot-headed, 
surly, and difficult to control. On the plantations Chinese 
are in demand and much preferred to Japanese. The 
Chinese are always industrious and always willing — 
the Japanese dissatisfied, ambitious, striving for better 
things, ready to organize and eventually to strike. In 
short, to look the matter in the face, the Japanese 
is too much like us, rapidly civilizing himself, and, 
like a plant, turning his leaves toward our sun. Over- 
seers hate him for it, much as parents punish in 
children the outcropping ugliness of honestly inherited 
tempers. 

In the great yard of the station, hundreds of Japanese 
men and women were pouring to the fences. They 
behaved as though they had never seen a white woman 
before. Few Caucasian women ever set foot across that 
long and spidery bridge. It seemed to me that it would 
be better if the wives and daughters of Honolulu would 
open their eyes on the flat pink village and think of what 
goes on within. Sometimes I am enamored of the 
thought of home missions. 

When I entered the big yard it was almost noon, and 
the midday meal was being prepared by the quarantined 
men and women. Bushels of feathery white rice were 
being removed from immense cauldrons in common 
shovels. A sufficient quantity for twenty persons was 
placed in a pan and transferred to the pretty blue rice- 
bowls, where the chop- sticks were soon clattering. 
Besides, there were boiled turnips and meat — all paid for 
by the plantation owners. 

Wherever I went, a string of sturdy, silent, curious 
Japanese followed. One evil-looking old man kept partic- 



J 2 HAWAII NEI 

ularly close, but no inducement could induce him to pose 
for the camera. At sight of it, he ran like a rat to his 
hole. The Japanese interpreter moved on before us, and 
in the distance tucked-up kimonos dropped like curtains 
and were decently folded over brown and beautifully 
muscled chests. 

They teach the conventionalities of the West, if not 
the moralities, at quarantine. 

One great fellow — a giant among Japanese — was 
girt about the loins with a figured blue cloth, covered 
with cabalistic symbols. He might have been a priest in 
some far-away province in the cold north, or a man 
shanghaied for reasons of state or personal hatred. At 
any rate, he frowned and held aloof from his companions, 
and glowered when asked to stand still for my camera's 
sake. 

In spite of the lack of mirrors, many of the women 
had arranged elaborate coiffures, and on their pretty and 
guileless faces was that look of innocent ignorance which 
shows that the tree of knowledge never grew in a 
Japanese Eden. Eve was not Oriental. 

The hot yard where these slaves to modern commer- 
cialism are caged is not always as peaceful as it was when 
I was there. Even then, the enforced quiet reminded me 
of the Warden's incongruous garden at San Quentin, 
where hundreds of convict faces peer over among the 
flowers and wear the shut-in look that is more oppressive 
to a free man or woman than anything in life — aye, or 
in death, for that matter. 

Sometimes a real or fancied grievance starts a battle 
in the inclosure. The big billets of wood that lie about 
are convenient weapons to enforce argument. Some 



HAWAII NEI J$ 

fearful fights have been witnessed from the unblinking 
windows in the pink building. 

"I have only twelve guards to six hundred men," my 
courteous guide, the superintendent, explained. ' ' Some- 
times I have only twelve guards to twenty-four hundred 
men and women. Naturally my men must learn to think 
quickly and act instantly. There is no time to be lost; 
for what begins in a duel often assumes the proportions 
of a battle. My men depend on their organization — 
the others have no chance to combine, and organization 
is everything. The Chinese are given to fighting among 
themselves. When a row starts, my men rush in with 
clubs and we do 'em up." 

' ' And is anybody killed ? " I inquired. 

"Well, no," he laughed; "but sometimes they come 
pretty near it." 

"And the punishment?" 

"Oh, well," he replied, shrugging, "there are differ- 
ent things. There are the clubs. Sometimes we beat 
'em, and sometimes we chain 'em to those pipes you see 
there and warm 'em up with electricity." 

Heavens! What must they think of our vaunted 
Western civilization? Clubs and electricity! And yet 
the men who can administer such punishment and quell 
such disturbance are not strong enough to keep the 
women separated from the men. 

"But usually we keep them tame by persuasion," 
added the superintendent. "I tell them they are not 
landed until they get away from here and they believe 
me. I tell them I will send them home again unless 
they behave well. And then I have a good Japanese 
interpreter. He scares them with the things he tells 



74 HAWAII NEI 

them. I never inquire too particularly into what he 
says — at any rate, we manage to keep them in order." 

An unusually pretty and merry young girl caught my 
eye. Her pudding -face was dimpling all over with 
laughter, like the bay in a breeze. I inquired if she too 
was bound to the hard plantation life for which the 
women receive only eight dollars a month, and under 
which they fade almost instantly, losing all their flower- 
like prettiness. 

4 ' Oh, no ; she is a ' free ' woman, ' ' replied the super- 
intendent, unconsciously emphasizing the real social 
difference between this one and the slaves about her. 
"She is the wife of a storekeeper in Honolulu, but as 
she traveled by steerage, she is detained like the rest." 

After the men and women have passed the medical 
inspection for the plantations, they are posed in groups 
on the veranda, each one plainly numbered, and officially 
photographed. Thousands of pictures are kept to assist 
identification, should the bond-servants try to escape. 
Many women with their babies were being photographed 
the day I was there. At the snap of the shutter the 
photographer waved them away, and each group melted 
into the quivering heat around the corner, while another 
dozen of olive-skinned, bare-legged, kimonoed beings 
took their places. Each woman smoothed her obi as she 
settled demurely into the chair in front of her lord. 

' ' Of course, nobody knows whether they are married 
or not. We don't ask for certificates," remarked a 
coarse attendant with a grin. A man registers a woman 
as his wife, and no questions are asked." 

As a matter of fact, many of these fresh - looking, 
pretty girls never go to the plantations at all. Most of 



HAWAII NEI 75 

them had only the vaguest ideas of where they were 
going. They only knew it was somewhere on what 
appeared to be the mainland, at which they gazed across 
the bilge-water through their palings. 

In Honolulu, house-servants, nursemaids, gardeners, 
chambermaids, cooks, waiters, stewards, laundresses — 
all are Orientals. There are Japanese and Chinese 
keepers of restaurants, tailors, hackmen, dressmakers, 
butchers, bakers, grocers, fruiterers, barbers, bootblacks — 
almost anything under the sun commercially — and they 
do not cater to their own people alone, but to the whites. 
Whole streets are given up to them. 

Many of these busy, contented, prosperous Japanese 
and Chinese merchants are said to have come to the 
islands as contract laborers. If so, I have every respect 
for their courage and faithfulness; for the hopeless owned 
emigrant and the well-fed tradesman are further apart 
than the towpath and the Presidency. 

Whenever you glance up from the facilities intro- 
duced for the correction of physical evils, you see the 
great human wall of Japanese, with their bristly pompa- 
dours, like black shoe-brushes, and their shrewd, ques- 
tioning eyes. They are herded like animals in a pasture. 
Strangers from a score of separated provinces in Japan — 
the scum of their towns, perhaps — perhaps a country 
population misled by tales of a land of promise beyond 
the seas, and so induced to leave their decent, clean 
houses and their work among the cool ooze of the rice- 
fields to labor among the hot, green leaves of the rusding 
cane. 



76 HAWAII NEI 



CHAPTER VII 

HAWAII BECOMES AMERICA 

Friday, the 12th of August, 1898, will be celebrated for 
generations to come as Hawaii's natal day. As a sight, 
the raising of the American flag over the capital of the 
Kamehamehas was most impressive, not because of the 
size of the crowd, for it was not large, nor for the tumult, 
for all was singularly silent, nor for elaborate ceremonial, 
for the exercises were very simple, but because a nation- 
ality was that day snuffed out like a spent candle, and a 
bigger, clearer, more certain light was set in its place. It 
was but another roll of the juggernaut car in which the 
lordly Anglo-Saxon rides on to his dream of universal 
empire. 

It was not as joyous an occasion as far-off America 
may have imagined. When it was over women who wore 
the American emblem wiped their eyes, and men who 
had worked for annexation for years said, with a throb 
in the throat, "How sad it was." As for the Hawaiians, 
they were not there. It was self-denial on their part; for 
the Kanaka loves music and color and crowds, and 
that invisible fluid which flows from man to man, and 
which we call excitement. 

But on this day of days the Hawaiians were at home. 
They were not on the streets ; they were not in the stores. 
They were shut up in their houses, and from the Queen's 




A Typical Hawaiian Lad. 



HAWAII NEI J J 

stately home to the meanest shed the open windows and 
closed shutters were lonely and somber as places of death. 
Those who were obliged to be abroad slipped through 
back streets and crooked lanes. They wore on their hats 
the twisted golden ilima that tells of love of royalty, and 
on their breasts the old flag and lettered badges that 
spoke their aloha for Hawaii to all the world. 

So few Hawaiians were in front of the Executive Build- 
ing that it might have been any capital rather than their 
own. There were Americans, Portuguese, Japanese, Chi- 
nese, but almost no Hawaiians, and those who were there 
showed marks of diluted blood. About the ceremonies 
was all the tension of an execution. Though the Hawaii- 
ans were not there to weep, others did it for them, and few 
Americans had the heart to gloat over this sorry triumph. 
It was the realization of Hawaii's divided house which 
caused Admiral Miller to prevent anything like a jubila- 
tion. Such a thing would have been brutality; for in 
Hawaii is the old heartache that drove the Britons to the 
mountain fastnesses of Wales — the same spirit that filled 
the beaten hosts of Harold when the Conqueror came 
over from Normandy — the bitterness that throbbed in 
the burning veins of the South in the days after unsuc- 
cessful secession. 

There was something very fine and strong and rare in 
the restraint the Admiral put upon the annexationists in 
their hour of triumph. There was little of that blowing 
of horns and shrilling of whistles that the American loves 
so well. Only one man drove about in a carriage groan- 
ing under a load of red, white, and blue, and he was not 
an American at all, but a Greek. A few small boys had 
the horn of torture of New Year's eve. but they were the 



7 8 HAWAII NEI 

veriest riffraff. There was absolutely no speechmaking, 
except a few dignified words from Minister Sewall, no 
spread-eagleism, no marching, no cheering. 

I had long before found out that the faculty and the 
desire to cheer are alike confined to the temperate zone, 
but this was self-restraint on a large scale that I had never 
seen before. That thousands were glad to the bottom 
of their souls was as true as that other thousands were 
grieved to the core, but it meant a great deal when the 
conquering thousands agreed to temper the wind to the 
shorn lamb. 

It was useless to deny that we had taken to ourselves 
an unwilling bride. There was much about the ceremony 
that smacked of a marriage of convenience, but it must 
be remembered that these new relatives of ours are the 
most amiable people in the world, which is our great 
good luck, and perhaps their ill-fortune. The stronger 
the Hawaiian the more resentful he is — it will take kind- 
ness and patience and time's soft obliteration to deal with 
this difficult problem. Some few Hawaiians were there — 
four on the platform reserved for distinguished folk, where 
diplomats and cabinet ladies and ministers' wives were 
seated in order of their husbands' prominence. One of 
these — the only native woman on the platform — was the 
wife of a prominent lawyer and politician. He was of 
the new order of things, and came for business reasons, 
and she came because he required it of her. 

In facial characteristics she was not unlike the ex- 
Queen, and many people mistook her for Liliuokalani. She 
came down the stairs on her husband's arm, very proud 
and dignified and stately, in a flowing holoku of black 
and violet, and hat plumed with the royal yellow. She 



HAWAII NEI 79 

held her head very high among her lighter neighbors, 
and she bore up very well until the Hawaiian Band com- 
menced to play "Hawaii Ponoi" for the last time as a 
national anthem. At the first note she covered her eyes 
with her fan and the tears dropped softly. She did not 
raise her eyes again, and she did not see the Hawaiian 
flag as it floated, then sank for the last time. Other 
natives who were forced to be there covered their faces. 
An old Kanaka woman who stood near me never moved 
her eyes from the flag as it drooped and came down the 
halyards, but the steady lids slowly brimmed over and a 
rain of tears fell on her cheeks. Hawaiians in the ranks 
of the National Guard covered their faces, or fixed their 
eyes on the ground. When "Hawaii Ponoi," which 
means "Our very own Hawaii," in a dear and intimate 
way, came to be played, the brass had a lump in its throat 
and the drums a sob. It was a weakly strain; for all the 
natives had thrown away their instruments and had fled 
around the corner, out of sight if not of hearing. Only 
ten men, none of them Hawaiian, were left to play. The 
men had begged their leader to be relieved from playing 
what was to them a dirge, and he, being kind, consented. 
It would have been like asking a child to sing at the 
funeral of a parent. The release of the musicians from 
the flag-lowering took away something of the sting from 
the sending of invitations to the ex-Queen and the Prin- 
cess Kaiulani. It was the very refinement of cruelty 
that reserved seats should be offered them, and the act 
caused fierce resentment among upper-class Hawaiians. 

The day began with heavy showers and threatening 
clouds. On the previous night, when the melancholy 
taps sounded from the barracks and marked the close of 



8o HAWAII NEI 

the last night of the life of Hawaii, rain was falling 
heavily. The kahunas all over the islands were praying 
for rain, but they prayed to too good purpose, for the 
rain came quickly and most of it had fallen before the 
morning of the flag-raising, while the evening of Annex- 
ation Day was perfection. 

The day began at 10 o'clock, when the Hawaiian 
National Guard formed at the barracks, preparatory to 
escorting the Philadelphia's men from the docks to the 
Executive Building. The men were in fresh white ducks, 
with brown leggings and blue coats, and as Colonel 
Fisher reviewed them for the last time as a Hawaiian 
organization, they presented a very fine appearance. 
The color-sergeant carried the flag bound with a golden 
lei — the red, white, and blue of Hawaii, which has 
known many vicissitudes, and which was soon to rise 
above the horizon in a new combination. It was a holi- 
day crowd that gathered near the barracks — a crowd 
agape with curiosity and wearing no heart on its sleeve. 
There were any number of Japanese, dainty little women 
in kimonos, with their husbands and babies in American 
clothes, and other Japanese women quite as petite, but 
minus all the daintiness and charm, rustling about in 
hideous, shapeless, starched holokus. There were swarms 
of Portuguese children, their grandmothers with orange 
handkerchiefs tied over their heads, and their mothers in 
the baglike dress of the country. Many Americans were 
tricked out with ugly badges representing Uncle Sam 
and Miss Hawaii (a negress), and the motto, "This is 
our wedding-day," which may have been funny when it 
first appeared as a cartoon, but had long been shorn of 
its humor. Two or three Hawaiians looked on, their 



HAWAII NEI 8 I 

hats twined with z/zmas, and their mild eyes full of 
trouble. 

And still the atmosphere of an execution grew. 
Everybody felt as though a man were condemned to die 
at 12 o'clock, and the suspense in the air was as horrible 
as that which rests over a field on the eve of battle. 
There was a touch of that comedy which lights the face 
of tragedy when the National Guard went down to 
meet and escort the Philadelphia's men. The guard was 
preceded by a corps of police officers, all of them natives, 
but with that rotundity in perspective which characterizes 
the peace-officer all over the world. These men seldom 
march and never drill, and when ordered to fall in line 
they were at a loss whether to make the line at their toes 
or at their belts. The orders were as amusing as the 
marching. "All ready there?" sang out a militia officer. 
The policemen nodded sagely. "Well, go ahead, then," 
yelled the officer. They went "ahead." 

Long before the military procession reached the 
Executive Building, the crowd was passing through the 
gates which were open to receive it. The scene of the 
flag-raising, christened Iolani Palace, dates from the time 
of Kalakaua, the merry monarch, and is a beautiful 
building, planned on noble and stately lines and set in a 
square of densely tropical shade, cut out in four avenues 
of light and bordered by the moonlight stems of gray 
and green royal palms, which lead up to the four great 
doors. Nestling at one side is the famous old bungalow 
of Kalakaua, whose walls could unfold a tale, and whose 
mirrors reflect a picture that would startle even the gay 
Parisians; for here the last Hawaiian King lived as kings 
have lived since time began. 



82 HAWAII NEI 

From the maitka door — that is, toward the moun- 
tain — a stand had been built, upon which one of the most 
impressive ceremonies of the century was soon to take 
place — the ceremony of making American soil of foreign 
territory. The tingle of great events was in the air. 

The people who poured through the gates were of all 
classes, with a tremendous variety of race. They were of 
all degrees, from the moderately rich, who came in 
hacks, and the very wealthy who arrived in their own 
carriages, to those who came on foot in true democratic 
fashion. On the lawn in the date-palms' shade, under 
leaves of rustling mangoes and papaya trees, seats had 
been built on the soft natural sward. While the morning 
was yet cool, Chinese women, with little almond-eyed 
babies, and Portuguese women with children in arms, 
their eyes black as sloes, came and pre-empted these seats, 
which were outside the pale — that is, outside the rope. 

Special guests were admitted through the lower hall 
of the great stone building. It was a difficult and deli- 
cate task to seat these special guests. Many seats on 
both upper and lower balcony were merely reserved for 
first-comers, but in the erected stand the representatives 
of the Foreign Office, buried beneath gold braid and 
brass fringes, had a dreadful time adjusting nice social 
balances, which varied not a hair's weight, and seating 
the dignitaries of the little republic whose numbered 
minutes were rapidly ticking away. They were always 
sticklers for form and precedent in Hawaii. 

The platform, decorated with entwined Hawaiian and 
American flags, was divided into halves. The front row 
of seats on one side was reserved for President Dole and 
his cabinet; that on the other side for Minister Sewall, 



HAWAII NEI 8$ 

Admiral Miller, and his staff. The wife of the President 
had the place of honor on one side — that is, within full 
view of the multitude — the wife of Minister Sewall had 
the place on the other. Next to Mrs. Dole, in her black 
frock and simple bonnet, came the cabinet ladies, and 
behind them the wives of ministers and ex-ministers, 
seated next their husbands, and then the foreign diplo- 
mats and consuls and their wives — a minimized epitome 
of the world waiting to see this miniature republic ingulfed 
in the events of the universe, forfeiting the independence 
of ages, because the navies and armies of a great country, 
just feeling its strength, demanded it as a resting-place, 
while Baby Switzerland, in its mountain fastnesses, had 
stood safely between the upper and the nether millstone 
these hundreds of years. 

Almost the last to come on the platform were several 
native gentlemen and ladies. These were all politicians — 
men who could not afford to stay away. There was the 
Speaker of the last House of Representatives, a counselor 
of state and his wife, and a circuit judge. Before 11:30 
the sharpshooters, with American flags around their hats, 
and the Citizens' Guard had arrived — both organizations 
composed of men who saw service and stood shoulder to 
shoulder in opposition to the monarchy. 

Soon after their coming a whiff of martial music, 
blown through the trees, announced the approach of 
another organized body of men, and the National Guard 
of Hawaii, preceded by the Government Band, came 
through the mauka gate, the Hawaiian flag floating, and 
the band playing Hawaiian music. Behind them were 
the blue-jackets of the Philadelphia, as American in looks 
as the guard was foreign; for the latter was largely made 



84 HAWAII NEI 

up of dark-skinned men, and the faces of all were brown 
from the sun. Separated from their comrades, walking 
apart in a space, were three men from the Philadelphia 
with a great roll in their arms. This prosaic-looking 
bundle was the American flag, soon to be raised. 

The mauka drive was striped with close rows of 
American sailors in blue and white. The spaces to the 
side were crowded with soldiers with brown faces. Then 
from the central door, on which all eyes were fixed, 
appeared a quartet of men in gold lace, heavy epaulets, 
and the senseless full-dress hats of the navy. A man 
next me whispered in awe, "They must be Knights of 
Pythias." Everybody supposed it was the Admiral, but 
it was not yet. These were officers of the Mohican, 
and they were almost as gorgeous as the gentlemen from 
the Foreign Office. 

Truth to tell, the Admiral had little to do with it. He 
it was who had brought the President's written wishes 
and who set the machinery in motion. He also placed 
the stamp of simplicity on the proceedings, but there- 
after he had nothing to do, except to signal the proper 
moment for the flag to go up. 

At 11:45 o'clock, President Dole and his cabinet 
entered, everybody standing as they came on the plat- 
form. The President looked like a man about to attend 
an afternoon tea, though his grave face was in contrast 
with his gay attire. The men of his cabinet were not all 
so correctly dressed. There were silk hats of every epoch 
since the missionaries first came to Hawaii — hats whose 
first appearance dates within the remembrance of no per- 
son now living, whose blocks long since went to make 
koa calabashes for sale to unsuspecting tourists. 



HAWAII NEI 85 

The President and his best men were followed almost 
immediately by Minister Sewall and Admiral Miller and 
his staff. Just at this time a gentle rain was falling — 
liquid sunshine, they call it in Hawaii — and the sense of 
oppression grew as the atmosphere became heavier and 
more difficult to breathe. 

Then came the last prayer of a religious government, 
a prayer for the safety of Hawaii's native sons and daugh- 
ters, every one standing uncovered the while and Minister 
Sewall fingering restlessly a large blue, official-looking 
envelope, which he carried under his arm. There was a 
brief interchange of formalities between Minister and 
President. The blue envelope containing a copy of the 
resolution of annexation was transferred to President 
Dole, who offered the sovereignty and public property of 
the Hawaiian Islands to Mr. Sewall. 

The President's voice rose for a moment, and the 
words, "With full confidence in the honor, justice, and 
friendship of the American people," came out in the 
clear tones of a bell. It made the hearts of Americans 
thrill. 

Again the President's voice sank to a low key, and 
thereafter all went as though it had been rehearsed, except 
that a cabinet minister or two occasionally got up or sat 
down in the wrong place, like Protestants strayed into a 
ritualistic church by mistake. 

Mr. Sewall took up the refrain in recitative. "Mr. 
President," he said, "in the name of the United States, I 
accept the transfer of the sovereignty and property of 
the Hawaiian Government. The Admiral commanding 
the United States naval forces in these waters will proceed 
to perform the duty intrusted to him." 



86 HAWAII NEI 

And so was heralded the great event for which every 
one had been holding the breath, and feeling that qualm 
akin to seasickness, with which sensitive people await an 
event that is desired yet dreaded. By this time it lacked 
but six minutes of noon, and the quavering strains of 
"Hawaii Ponoi" were heard, coming up with but half the 
usual volume. It sounded as the voices of the Pilgrim 
Fathers may have when they tried to sing the songs of 
home in a far-off land, or as homesick travelers sing 
"Home, Sweet Home" on distant shores. There was a 
sob and a heartbreak in it, and before the end came an 
almost complete breakdown. Even the leader's baton 
Was moving through a mist of tears; for he had written 
the music years before, and the memory of the times 
when he had played it rushed over him with irresistible 
force. 

Handkerchiefs were out on the platform now, and 
ministers' wives and cabinet ladies who had been born 
under this flag, with its eight stripes of red, white, and 
blue, and the English jack in the corner, were not 
ashamed to wipe their eyes. The men were frowning 
fiercely and trying to wink back the tears, but some of 
them wept audibly and forgot to be ashamed. President 
Dole made a signal to Colonel Soper, who waved a white 
handkerchief to some one in the crowd. The troops 
presented arms, and far away was heard the deep bass 
boom of the Philadelphia's salute, and the nearer treble 
of the Hawaiian battery in melancholy duet. There 
were twenty-one guns, the last national salute of the Ha- 
waiian flag. During the salute there was a vigorous wig- 
wagging of signal flags from the central tower, upon 
which, as well as upon the side-towers, men had been 



HAWAII NEI 87 

posted all the morning. The bugles rose and fell in the 
ever-melancholy "taps," and while every one held the 
breath the beautiful flag of Hawaii trembled for an instant, 
then started, and slowly, gracefully sank down the hal- 
yards to the ground, where it was caught by loving hands 
and reverently folded. Just as it started in its descent, 
the clouds broke away, and a square of the blue Hawaiian 
sky showed itself as if in farewell and blessing. A great 
sigh went up from the thousands of upturned faces, and 
many upon whom the flag had no claim wept for sympa- 
thy. Every man within sound of the saluting guns stood 
uncovered, and far away at the water front, Kanaka 
boatmen, plying their trade, bared and bowed their 
heads as religious peasants at sound of the far-flung 
Angelus. 

At the moment when the tension was so great that it 
could not be borne an instant longer, the Admiral nodded 
to his flag- lieutenant, who gave the order, "Colors roll 
off," and the cheery American bugles cut the air. It 
was a tremendous relief. Then the well-loved strains of 
"The Star-Spangled Banner" came from the Philadel- 
phia's band, and every one who knew the words hoped 
from the depths of a fervent heart that this banner might 
wave over territory that should be in reality a land of the 
free and a home of the brave. 

The American flag that was by this time climbing to 
its lofty position was an immense piece of bunting, what 
is known in navy parlance as a "No. 1 regulation." It 
was thirty feet long and eighteen feet wide, and as it went 
up the halyards it seemed to cover and tenderly protect the 
entire front of the building. Almost simultaneously with 
the raising of the official flag its smaller brethren were run 



88 HAWAII NEI 

up on the side-towers, and again was heard the salute 
to the new sovereignty — as though the guns were 
saying, " The King is dead; long live the King!" The 
central flag was so immense that though it hung limp and 
lifeless for a moment, it was but a second before it caught 
the breath of a passing breeze, and flung itself in wide 
magnificence. Then for the first time there was a cheer — 
strong from the direction of the sharpshooters and the 
Citizens' Guard, weak from the places where were seated 
America's new citizens of alien blood. 

Minister Sewall read the President's proclamation, 
which left everything official unchanged in Hawaii. Then 
he made a speech, which was the valedictory of the old, 
the salutatory of the new. 

There followed the giving and the taking of the oath — 
always an impressive ceremonial, even when given glibly 
in a modern court of law. The Chief Justice in a black 
holoku administered it. He should have taken it pre- 
viously himself, but Hawaii's Chief Justice is a dictatorial 
person, and gave the oath without being an American 
citizen himself. The President took it alone, his cabinet 
officers followed, their hands shaking like aspen-leaves. 
Then the band played "Columbia, the Gem of the 
Ocean," the Philadelphia men went back to the water- 
front, and the crowd filtered slowly out through the 
gates, casting many a longing, lingering glance behind 
at the new flag, flaunting its red, white, and blue against 
the sea of tropical green. The skies ceased to weep 
over it, and the sun came out and warmed and blessed it. 

Most of the Americans made their way to Kalakaua's 
old barracks, there to see the National Guard take the 
oath. The enlisted men were told to remove their caps — 



HAWAII NEI 89 

those who wished to swear. The ranks were by no 
means full, many men having stayed away in anticipation 
of this. There was a moment of suspense as the men 
were given an instant to decide at the parting of the 
ways. It was like that moment of deadly delay before 
the altar when one is allowed to speak or else forever 
after hold his peace. A corporal's guard sturdily 
remained covered and did not raise a hand, a proceeding 
requiring moral courage of the highest order. After- 
ward came the humiliating order to step from the ranks 
and surrender their arms — and all because they were 
true to the flag of their nativity. President Dole pre- 
sented a flag to the new Americans — the faded colors 
which once belonged to the Boston, dim and begrimed 
from years in camphor. Mr. Dole said that the Hawaiian 
flag had gone down in "honorable surrender." and the 
soldiers hung their heads as though no surrender was 
ever honorable. 

Officially, Annexation Day was over. In the evening, 
brilliant fire-balls climbed the still, dark skies, and wild 
noises disturbed the silent tropical night — these the 
contribution of the Annexation Club. Later, there was a 
ball — mixed as to guest, and varied as to detail — a ball 
in the old throne-room of Iolani Palace where the dark, 
disapproving faces of rows of Kamehamehas looked down 
on dancers from every country under the sun except 
their own. There was scarcely a Hawaiian face among 
them all — one or two pretty half-breeds — and yet you 
will find people who will tell you in dead earnest that the 
natives were absolutely pining for annexation. Stranger 
still, these people expect you to believe them. 

Long after midnight the lights went out under the 



90 HAWAII NEI 

stems of the ghostly royal palms, keeping their vigil of 
years, and Honolulu slept under the protection of the 
American flag. 

The missionary had rendered his account 




Where Fishes Leap and Play. 



\ 



HAWAII NEI 91 



CHAPTER VIII 

A queen's home-coming 

There is nothing festive about the home-coming of a 
throneless queen. It is more of a funeral than a fete; 
but when the loss of caste does not carry with it loss of 
loyalty, and when the affection of a people is beyond 
taint or hurt, then adversity has compensations, for true 
love shines best in the darkest days. Had Liliuokalani 
remained a queen, she would never have known how 
much her people loved her. 

In a few years, when the families of royal blood and 
those of the rich merchants are inextricably mingled, 
when every one in Hawaii shall have a moi as ancestor on 
one side and a shop-keeper on the other, when all the 
coats-of-arms shall have been quartered with a ham or a 
cheese, and the old women with yards of historical 
legends at their tongues' end are all dead, it will be 
impossible to have such a home-coming as was Liliuo- 
kalani' s on the night of the 1st of August, in the year 
of grace and annexation. Such a home-coming will 
not be possible then, because the young Hawaiians 
are ignorant of the sagas of their race. Historians 
with more or less sympathy have committed the oral 
histories to writing, but there are no young olioli 
singers who know how to half-carol, half-yodel the 
deeds of the illustrious ancestors of the royal house. 



92 HAWAII NEI 

The living histories are dying year by year, and more's 
the pity. 

The home-coming of Liliuokalani was inexpressibly 
sad. It was marked by a barbaric ceremonial and a 
heartfelt joy, tempered by sorrow; for annexation was a. 
thing determined upon. Always before when Liliuoka- 
lani came home after fruitless diplomatic journeys, there 
was some hope, but this time there was none. The 
Hawaiian monarchy had been swallowed by America. 
The little Hawaiian republic had committed suicide, but 
in its death-grip it had strangled the monarchy too. 

It was past midnight of August ist when the Gaelic 
was sighted off Koko Head. At the announcement, 
hundreds of natives tumbled from their beds, and others 
who had kept an all-night vigil lest the Queen should 
come unannounced, hurried to the wharf, like those wise 
and vigilant virgins, until the whole water-front was a 
mass of moving figures. Of these, few were Caucasians, 
and the sprinkling of palefaces was not enough to con- 
ventionalize that heartfelt welcome nor to temper the 
savage splendor of it all. 

Those who had thought that the Queen would remain 
quietly aboard the steamer until daylight, had reckoned 
without her love of Hawaii nei. She was not only 
awake, but had been pacing the deck for hours, straining 
for a glimpse of the lights that warn mariners of the 
sharp-toothed coral reefs that encircle her country. It 
was a perfect midnight. The sky was a deep purple, 
set with stars and curtained with clouds. At intervals 
the light of the full moon spilled over the rim of the 
cloud-bank and showed the city crowded between the 
green water and the green hills, those wonderful hills 



HAWAII NEI 93 

and perpetually weeping- valleys which girdle Honolulu, 
and which are fresher than any other verdure in the 
world. 

One by one the buoys sparkled into life, marking the 
road for the ship, and the natives murmured their joy 
that the steamer was coming in. The pilot-boat darted 
out, and soon the twin vertical lights of the Gaelic 
were sending a long ray over the water. Not a sound 
disturbed the deathly stillness of the dock. The huge 
hulk of the Gaelic slid deftly into place and the gang- 
plank went up. The passengers were all on deck; for 
queens do not come home every day. Americans among 
the crowd picked out faces they knew and saluted boister- 
ously, but still the natives gave no sound. 

The Princess Kaiulani looked on in the moonlight, 
and the Hawaiian women clung to each other sobbing. 
Prince David, with a few tried and trusted royalists, went 
up the gangplank and found the Queen in a little inclos- 
ure of canvas, arranged to shelter her from curious eyes 
during the trip. It was several moments before she 
appeared, and then she walked down the gangplank on 
the arm of Prince David, stately and dignified, stepping 
as slowly as if it were a royal progress and the feather 
robe of the Kamehamehas under her feet. She was all 
in black, and her face under the black plumes looked sad 
an 1 worn. 

Still that deathly silence! Not a cheer broke the 
quiet, and th^ throneless Queen looked from side to side, 
while not an upturned face strayed for a moment from 
her. She seemed a little pained at the silence. Finally 
she herself broke the spell. 

"Alalia, aloha"'' .-he said in a sweet and low but 



94 HAWAII NEI 

powerful voice, smiling sadly upon them. They had all 
the time been standing with uncovered heads, but 
instantly a storm of "Alohas" broke from the crowd, and 
they pressed to the gangplank and made as though they 
would touch her. Suddenly from the crowd a wizened 
old woman struck up a weird chant, rising and falling in 
barbaric cadence. It was a sound so appropriate to coral- 
reefs and cocoanut-groves, so utterly out of key with the 
big modern ship and the electrically lighted pier and all 
the elaborate paraphernalia of modern life that everybody 
started. The song was of the time of the malo and the 
calabash, and as the ancient crone sang, lifting her 
wrinkled arms and her shriveled fingers to heaven, all 
the years and all the teachings since the first missionaries 
came to the islands seemed to fall away as a mantle, and 
it was again old Hawaii, the beautiful land of Kame- 
hameha. 

The Queen did not appear to listen, but her face 
lighted as the old minstrelsy fell on her ear. She and 
her suite and Prince David seated themselves in Kaiulani's 
carriage, with its white horses, and then, for the first 
time, some one proposed three cheers. They were given 
heartily, in American fashion, but they did not accord 
with the rest of the greeting. There was a dash of white 
horses, a nodding of heads to left and right, fervent 
alohas mingled with sobs, and Liliuokalani was gone. 
The men and women whom she left behind were una- 
shamed of their wet eyes. 

But the scene of the night was at Washington Place, 
the private residence of the Queen, where were enacted 
such things as have not been known in the islands for 
many years and may never be again. It was a fit setting 



HAWAII NEI 95 

for the passing of a dynasty. The house of Keawe-a- 
heulu went out with all the primitive savagery with which 
it had begun. One could shut his eyes and imagine him- 
self in the heart of Africa, but never in the latest of 
American provinces, within a stone's throw of the biggest 
of foreign churches and within a square of a modern 
hotel. 

The home of Liliuokalani was once the property of 
her husband's family. It is a big square white house, 
built after the plan of plantation-houses in the Southern 
American States. An immense balcony encircles it, and 
the house itself is lost in a wilderness of tropical foliage. 
Upon Liliuokalani' s arrival, liveried servants cropped up 
as if by magic, like those armed men who sprang from 
the dragon's teeth. Two chamberlains in black broad- 
cloth and tall silk hats with fluttering white rosettes, were 
stationed by the great entrance-gates, and two more were 
at the broad flight of steps that led to the front door. 
These men were straight and stiff as posts, and they held 
in their hands kukui-xmXs bound in ti- leaves. The oily 
nuts blazed and flared like torches of pitch, and gave off 
a soft white vapor, with the pungent smell of prayer- 
sticks in a Chinese temple. The burning of kukuz'-nuts 
is a prerogative of Liliuokalani' s family, and all through 
the night her torch-bearers stood stiffly erect. They 
were old men who had performed the same service at the 
palace in other and better days, but when one saw them 
first at half-past two and last at half-past five, their old 
backs were quite as straight and their old hands as steady 
as in palmier days. 

The windows and doors in the great house had been 
thrown open and the lights from within streamed out 



96 HAWAII NEI 

through the trees. The white pillars and door-frames 
had been wound with green garlands, and over the door 
was a Hawaiian welcome, " Pumehama." Lamps, 
shaded with red, gave a cheerful glow, and the brilliant 
moon and flaring torches made the grounds as bright as 
day. Under the ragged banana-leaves, where the dews 
of early morning were congealing, and where the fra- 
grance of jasmine and stephanotis and strange odorous 
spider-lilies was almost overpowering, a score of native 
men squatted in tailor -fashion, as though chairs had 
never come into use in Hawaii. The women crowded 
near the house where they could see through the open 
French windows. In the dining-room the Queen was 
breaking bread in her own home. She was seated in 
state at a plain deal table of a pattern found in many 
American kitchens, but there was no one in all that 
gathering of high enough rank to sit at the board. Such 
are the strange contrasts of this defunct monarchy. 

There were attendants in plenty. Pretty young girls 
waved slowly white feather kahilis, and others brought 
the fruits of the island to the ex-Queen. She was still 
queen to them. She was dressed in black and lavender, 
with a soft sparkle of diamonds about the hands. In the 
light she looked extremely handsome with the strong 
lines that sorrow and anxiety have etched in her face, and 
with all the obstinate self-will and vanity quite gone. 
All the while the Queen was at table the priestesses out- 
side kept up the melancholy oliolis, queer recitatives 
recounting the deeds of valor of the ancestors of the 
royal house, set to barbaric music reminiscent of Ai'da. 
Sometimes the natives took up the refrain in a sort of 
chorus, the women's voices blending in perfect thirds, 



HAWAII NEI 97 

and the men wailing after the old fashion for the 
dead. 

For hours the chant went on without interruption, 
seemingly endless. The figures of the old women were 
bending and swaying as they gesticulated wildly, their 
voices cracking and breaking like those of some Deborah 
of old. Much of the history told in the song sagas was 
unintelligible to the young Hawaiians present; for the 
language is rapidly changing and many of the old words 
are entirely obsolete, but the old people understood and 
hung on every word uttered by Mahoe and Hana, drink- 
ing in the old tale of prowess and valor as though they 
had never heard it before. 

When the Queen was sufficiently refreshed, her old 
retainers passed before her. At the veranda outside they 
fell on their knees, and, walking thus, passed to the 
woman whom they still regard as their chiefess. Almost 
all those who knelt were old and white-haired, and the 
spontaneous act of loyalty must have been hard for old 
knees. Whatever a republican may think of such prac- 
tices, there was something pathetic in this train of old, 
bent forms, wending its slow way before the Queen — the 
Queen, who is but a common mortal, and can no longer 
enforce one small prerogative that once was hers by 
right. But all that loyalty could give was rendered to 
her as freely as though the power of life and death were 
yet in her hands. 

One old man, whose hair was white and whose eyes 
were sightless, groped with his cane, then fell on his 
knees with the rest, and needed no eyes to find the 
Queen's hand to kiss. She called each by name, and 
wiped her own eyes as the tears fell on her hand. The 



98 HAWAII NEI 

old retainers backed out of her presence, still on then- 
knees, as though it were yet tabu to let one's shadow fall 
upon a king. Later some subjects of higher degree were 
permitted to kiss the royal hand without preliminary 
kneeling, and some few favored women remained kneeling 
about the Queen, like children in kindergarten circle, 
while they talked and exchanged the experiences that 
had thronged their lives since last they met. 

Outside, while the comfortable gossipy conference 
went on within, and no one even dreamed of going to 
bed, while the Queen occasionally smiled at some story 
told by her women, the witches of the night sang their 
mournful lays. The old Mahoe had worked herself into 
a frenzy as she ran singing about the place. An old 
man who is a familiar street character joined her, and 
simultaneously they burst into the melody and the rhyth- 
mic movements of one of the old-time hulas, the real 
hula, when it was a war-dance and had not been ruined 
by the interpretation of foreigners. As they swayed and 
swung and nppled their muscles and made strange, en- 
ticing gestures with their shriveled hands, it began to 
grow pink and pearl beyond the frayed-out leaves of the 
bananas, and the foliage of the cocoanut-palm swayed in 
the first chill breeze of dawn. 

Still the natives crooned among the trees, still the 
Queen opened her heart once again to those whom she 
trusts, and still the endless story of the deeds of the kings 
went on, though the voices of the singing women were 
growing faint with fatigue. In front, the torch-bearers, 
forgotten by every one, were erect and solemn as British 
footmen, and the kukui-nuts still flared, though a greater 
light had eclipsed theirs. Women with bundles of twigs 



HAWAII NEI 99 

in their hands bent double to clear the drive of the flowers 
that had been cast in the path of their crownless Queen. 
The next day saw a hookupa, or gift-bearing, to the 
Queen at Washington Place; but though the natives 
flocked in great flower-decked crowds, bringing all sorts 
of gifts, from modest taro wrapped in //-leaves to live 
chickens tied by the legs, and live pigs, squealing, noth- 
ing in the garish, bright-tinted day could eclipse the 
memory of the strange, barbaric, sweet-scented night, 
when under the moon and the kukui flame the Queen 
who has no throne except in the hearts of her country- 
men came again to that country which will be loyal to 
her as long as there is a single native of pure blood on 
the island. From Ioane, the blind player of the jew's- 
harp, who was once ballet-master to Kalakaua, and who, 
because of the ravishing sights he saw, has been con- 
demned to blindness by a not unjust Providence — from 
Ioane, with his coat all rags, to descendants of chiefs 
still rich in land and cocoanuts, all the natives flocked and 
crowded to see the Queen.- Shops were closed, and all 
native business was suspended. For the first time I saw 
my favorite boatman dry and clothed. Even the canoes 
must idle while all respect and reverence was paid to the 
Queen. Outside on the lawn, in a fainting, palpitating 
pile, the gifts were gathered. Many of them were living 
things, some of which were passed from hand to hand to 
the kitchen. There was faint possibility and no desire 
that the Queen should ever know who sent the gifts. 
The natives were paying their old feudal rent, paying it 
in kind, and as cheerfully as though the chicken were not 
the only one spared by the mongoose, or the pig the last 
of his tribe. 



IOO HAWAII NEI 

The hookupu is, I suppose, the legitimate ancestress 
of the donation party or the birthday surprise, but oh, 
how different! Here were no parsimonious farmers 
bringing frost-bitten potatoes and damaged things they 
did not want for themselves. Instead, the offerings were 
without spot or blemish — the very best that they had. 
Sometimes the gift from the slender store meant that the 
family would have to go without, but even that thought 
did not dim a single native smile. In all that crowd of 
bright-faced people on the green turf, not one was there 
expecting any favor — not one in search of office or 
preferment. 

Happy Hawaii! 



HAWAII NEI TOI 



CHAPTER IX 

HOW ROYALTY IS BURIED 

It is not every day that one sits at the death-bed of a 
nation, with an eye on a dying face and a finger on a 
fluttering pulse. Nationalities, happily, are not snuffed 
out so often; and while I am as glad to be an American 
as I should have been glad to be something else, had I 
been born elsewhere, I would rather be an American by 
birth than to be made one by treaty. 

During the last days of independent Hawaii, the 
Americans were happy. They went around with faces 
quietly beaming, as of travelers returning home. Why 
should they care that the Hawaiians were to be ingulfed 
in the resistless Caucasian stream, and a hundred years 
hence would be but a speck in the blood, a spot on the 
skin — a people passed from history? The death-knell 
that had sounded was not for them. Why repine at the 
sad but inevitable history of the nations ? In this world 
few men have time for the blood on other lintels. 

Nothing was more typical of the old order that 
passeth away than a royal funeral that swept through the 
streets of Honolulu less than a month before the Hawaiian 
flag went into eternal eclipse. It was symbolic of that 
interesting barbarism, the tinsel and ceremony of that 
feathered monarchy that has gone forever. Considered 
from the standpoint of the picturesque, it is a pity that 



T02 HAWAII NEI 

the peaceful pageantry of the little island monarchy could 
not have survived. The climate fitted it, the beautiful 
landscape suited it, the natives adored it. But as one of 
the young planters put it, tersely, — a young planter 
whose grandfather was a missionary, and whose father 
is a millionaire, — "We don't want a picturesque gov- 
ernment. We want a government under which we can 
make money." 

Well, well, so we do; so we do! I apologize to you, 
O practical, hard-headed Nineteenth Century, for regret- 
ting a cloak of canary feathers and a grass house. The 
canary cloak is in the museum, and the grass house has 
a roof of corrugated iron; the beautiful native wears 
hideous clothes, and the whole world is mad with money- 
making. 

To go back, the Crown Princess of Tahiti was to be 
buried from the Catholic church around the corner, and 
when I said I was going, they laughed me to scorn. 
Fancy any one caring to see a royal corpse in this nine- 
teenth century! But I cared to see it. I seemed to be 
about the only haole who did — the other Americans 
present being residents apparently. 

On the opposite side of the street was drawn up the 
carriage of the American Minister, his Kanaka servants 
in braided liveries of white duck. A squad of men from 
the United States steamer Mohican made a white column 
in the hot little street, and there were several companies 
of the Hawaiian National Guard. But these had nothing 
to do with the royal funeral. They were grouped about 
a black hearse, where an undertaker of conventional pat- 
tern, with black gloves recently inked and a coat of 
sage-green, was putting the finishing touches. Inside 



HAWAII NEI IO3 

was the flag -draped casket of the bandmaster of a 
regiment of Minnesota volunteers. It was smothered 
in strange waxen tropical flowers, with an odor that 
swept you off your feet. They were already droop- 
ing — emblems of the sudden death and swift decay 
of the tropics. The Hawaiian Band was playing 
" Nearer, My God, to Thee," at this burial by strangers 
of a soldier who had not lived to reach the battle- 
field. Sad as it was, there were stranger things across 
the way. 

The Catholic buildings are low-browed and screened 
behind walls. They dwell in the perpetual shimmering 
shade of Honolulu. Quivering light-rays fall on their 
faces through branches of the tamarind and the heavier 
shade of the thirsty banyan-tree. Palms wave overhead, 
and you can hear the cocoanuts click softly, like casta- 
nets, if you have the listening ear. 

The wide doors of the church were open and music 
streamed out, chiefly the native voice, flat and twanging, 
as though the vocal chords lacked a sufficient sounding- 
board. People were packed between the light plastered 
walls of the church and the street — such a strange, mixed 
assemblage. At one side were six native men, in their 
hands kahilis of feathers, shaped like huge bottle- 
brushes, the wooden handles tied with yellow ribbons. 
The men themselves wore black clothes and black silk 
hats, and around their necks were wide ahuulas, or 
collarettes of canary and red feathers. These were 
retainers of old and noble families, and the kahilis have 
been carried for generations in royal processions and 
corteges. Stout native women, in trailing holokus of 
rich black silk, were looking after this part of the 



104 HAWAII NEI 

ceremony — women with English as correct and accent 
as refined as that of any Colonial dame. 

A motley crowd peeped and peered into the incense- 
laden interior through the open doorway. There was a 
daughter of China, in short blue blouse and loose flopping 
trousers, anklets of jade on her slim brown legs, and her 
bare feet thrust into embroidered slippers. Her shiny 
black queue was lengthened with rose-pink silk, the Chi- 
nese color of youth, and her ears were disfigured with 
their weight of jade and gilt. On her head was rakishly 
poised a white sailor hat of unmistakably modern cut! 

At the other side of the door a small Japanese maid, 
with demure mouth, stood in her scant kimono and per- 
fectly tied obi, her feet in clacking stilted slippers. Ka- 
nakas, Portuguese, Ethiopians, and Americans made up 
the fringe of the crowd, all hobnobbing, rubbing elbows, 
and craning necks in simple democratic equality. 

And within high mass was being said for the soul of 
a princess of Tahiti. On one side of the street the 
funeral procession of a soldier-boy from the far North- 
west, on the other the feather-trimmed retainers of a 
Tahitian princess — such are the sharp contrasts of this 
newest American possession. 

One of the ladies in black silk holokus told me about 
the woman who was dead. The latter was Mrs. Ninito 
Sumner, Crown Princess of Tahiti, and a first cousin of 
Pomare, Queen of Tahiti. In her youth, Mrs. Sumner 
came to Hawaii as the betrothed of one of the Kame- 
hamehas. But the kings of the fast-dying race of the 
great Kamehameha reigned briefly. Before the Tahitian 
princess arrived her fiance was dead, and she never ruled 
in Hawaii. The family was very polite about it. The 



HAWAII NEI I05 

prince next in line was away, and the Tahitian princess 
was invited to remain and be betrothed to him when he 
returned. She did remain, but she did not wait for him. 
John K. Sumner, a wealthy half- white, saw and admired 
her, wooed and wed her. In time the strong racial ties 
of Polynesia drew the princess and her foreign husband 
back to Tahiti. Sometimes they stayed there for ten 
years, returning always to Hawaii. There were no chil- 
dren — there seldom are in these royal families — and the 
Sumners grew old together. In spite of their wealth, 
they loved the old, simple life of pre-civilized days, and 
sometimes they would live in one of the warm, moist, 
tropical valleys back of Honolulu for months at a time, 
their home a grass house, their bed a braided mat, their 
diet a calabash of pot. It was a relapse into simplicity. 
In later years troubles came to them. The aged husband 
inherited the trustfulness of his mother's race, and was 
easily imposed upon by white men. On one of Sumner's 
trips he met a plausible stranger who persuaded him to 
give him a power of attorney over all his lands. The old 
man was made to believe that the success of certain law- 
suits depended on his leaving the islands at once. After 
he had gone, his friends heard of the transaction, brought 
the matter to the attention of the courts, and urged the rev- 
ocation of the power of attorney and the appointment of 
a guardian for the old man. The worry of it hastened the 
death of Mrs. Sumner. 

While I was listening to the world-old story of the 
oppression of the dark skins by the white, and of the 
fraud, the deceit, the treachery that goes with civilization, 
poured in my ear by my soft-voiced friend in the trailing 
holokuy my eyes were becoming accustomed to the soft, 



I06 HAWAII NEI 

velvety gloom of the interior of the church. Near the 
door, outside of which I was standing, were many chairs, 
piled feet upward — a wild chaos of legs that told of a 
dwindling congregation. Far down the aisle were more 
feather kahilis, as symbolic of power as the fasces of the 
Roman lictor or the mace of modern representative 
assemblies. The same motley throng, all colors, all ages, 
all nationalities, sat in the pews. There was a tiny white 
child, with yellow curls straying over her bare white 
shoulders, sitting next to a brown Kanaka, whose shining 
face looked fresh from the cocoanut-oil of the South 
Pacific. Near the chancel was the casket, with its tapers, 
and behind it a sweet-faced old bishop in his miter — a 
man that I can very well believe is well beloved — sur- 
rounded by his priests — missionaries who have taken the 
vow of poverty. 

The interior of the church was of conventional pat- 
tern, for the Catholic church is the same the world over. 
Only the kahilis gave a touch of the islands. At the 
right of the nave, in an inclosed space, knelt the Ladies 
of the Sacred Heart, from their convent near by, their 
white robes flowing in Milton's "majestic train," and 
their clasped hands hidden in the folds of their diapha- 
nous white veils. The kneeling nuns in white, the bishop 
with his little retinue, the dusky bowed heads in the 
church, and the barbaric feathered kahilis made up a pic- 
ture not elsewhere to be duplicated. 

The high mass for the daughter of Tahiti was over, 
and the congregation streamed down the aisle. Over its 
cheap, brightly colored carpet they came, under the 
tender picture of St. Veronica, with its infinite, everlast- 
ing pity. The mourning color in Hawaii is black, and 



HAWAII NEI I07 

no negro ever loved crepe more than they. The chief- 
tain families of the islands are much intermarried and 
have a wide connection, and it seemed as though every 
one in the church wore mourning. Rusty black crepe 
veils, the state mourning of decades, swept the floor. 
They showed by signs of unmistakable wear how frequent 
have been the deaths in past years. Some women wore 
capes of crepe, and very few had heart enough for the 
yellow leis that tell of royalty. 

The casket was hidden under quantities of yellow 
flowers, the royal color, with a few garlands of deathly 
sweet oleanders yielding up their fragrant lives. Behind 
the casket walked the aged husband, a little old man in 
black broadcloth, the wrinkled back showing where he 
had shrunk away from the lines of thirty years ago. A 
six-inch band of crepe on his hat and a sash of black 
crepe on his arm made his identity and his widowhood 
unmistakable, but his face was calm and unmoved. Even 
death could not disturb the calm of senility. He had 
outlived grief, and it passed him by. 

The hearse was marked with four immense white 
plumes, and four more, shaped like kahilis, were stuck 
at the heads of the black horses. On the top of the 
hearse was a representation of the Hawaiian crown — an 
immense confection of red plush and gold-leaf, only used 
on special occasions, and this time shrouded in crepe. 

I stood inside the fence, near a lay brother in his 
black garb, and pressed my forehead against the iron 
palings as the cortege moved slowly away. The crown- 
surmounted hearse scarcely attracted a glance in the 
narrow, bustling streets, where Oriental and Occidental 
civilization forget to nod as they pass by. Of late years 



108 HAWAII NEI 

there have been many royal funeral pageants as impres- 
sive as this. Many times has the crown been borne 
above the hearse, as the short lives of chiefs and chief- 
esses came to an end. It seemed as though royalty found 
the air of the republican continent unbearable. 

Then the white-plumed hearse with its crown of yel- 
low lets, the kahilis and their bearers, all the pomp and 
circumstance of barbaric royalty, with the dazed old man 
behind, passed from view beyond a grove of palms. 

The Crown Princess of Tahiti is envied by some of 
her kindred. She, at least, did not oudive her kingdom. 




The Most Cc'.ebrated of Island Kahunas. 



HAWAII NEI IO9 



CHAPTER X 

THE KAHUNA PASSES 

It is easier, infinitely, to find a needle in a haystack 
than a kahuna in Hawaii. A kahuna^ be it known, is a 
relic of the ancient priesthood — a doctor, a wizard, an 
impostor, a faith-curer, sometimes a bard, always a sooth- 
sayer. The kahuna' s medical theory he shares with the 
Chinese, preparing a feast of pig and awa which, eaten 
by the relatives of the patient, acts only by indirection. 
Probably the sick one is more likely to recover than if 
this pot-pourri were fed to him. Sometimes the witch- 
doctor prescribes a dip in the surf for fever; the effect 
may be imagined. 

The kahunas are a class tabu in modern, republican, 
Americanized Hawaii, even as they were feared, honored, 
and respected in old Hawaii. Everything that was loved 
in the old is hated in the new, and vice versa. The 
kahuna is proscribed and prosecuted under the law of 
these years of grace and freedom of religious belief, as a 
doctor who practices medicine without a license. Let 
him hang a talisman about the neck of a patient, and it is 
all right; but let him prescribe a diet of herbs or a broth 
of leaves, and the law is upon him. The patients of other 
doctors die, and no one wonders; but let the patient of a 
kahuna droop and wither, and the law exacts its life for a 
life. 



IIO HAWAII NEI 

It is because he is so persistently misunderstood that 
the kahuna flees from a white man as he would from the 
plague. He is afraid of bleached faces, and the presence 
of a wahine haole (foreign woman) at his shrine sends his 
gods away from home. One kahuna assured me gravely 
that after 1 had visited him, his gods refused for a week 
to hear his prayers. 

The days I wasted hunting kahunas might have been 
spent in a better cause, I am assured by a prosperous 
churchman. I believe he is right. For instance, I might 
have visited schools; but to my persistency and bad taste 
I am indebted for one of the most fascinating experiences 
of my stay in Hawaii. 

In my first search I was led by a will-o'-the-wisp hack- 
man, who pretended to be omniscient. Yes, he knew a 
kahuna — knew him well — a great and good and holy 
man. He lived in one of the valleys back of Honolulu, 
and might he take me up? He might, and he did. We 
went out through the Portuguese quarter, and suddenly 
flung ourselves into a steep and narrow defile in the hills, 
so rocky and so rough that the cab wheels might have 
been climbing Jacob's ladder, such was the jolting. It 
misted gently all the way, and the sun, shining in behind 
us through the rifted rocks, threw fairy rainbows across 
the valley, spanning it like the many arches of Mirza's 
dream. All the people in this happy valley were Hawaii- 
ans. Women in holukus, very much tucked up, washed 
serenely in a gutter by the roadside. Children, nearly 
naked, scampered along by us, for evidently carriages 
did not often pass that way. Girls on horseback, bare- 
headed and barefooted, acted as our outriders. Their 
bare legs stuck out at either side, and their holokus 



HAWAII NEI III 

floated behind them like the winged pau, the old riding- 
dress that has disappeared from the islands. 

We stopped before a tumble-down shack, and the 
driver clambered out. Only women appeared to be at 
home in the valley, and the Amazonian relatives of the 
kahuna poured out of the shanty. Kahunaism, unlike 
other priestly professions, does not seem to be profitable 
in this Edenic valley. The women of the kahuna were 
as mad-looking as my imagination had painted the 
master of sorcery. There was a young girl with matted 
hair and the mark of Ethiopia in her face. She was 
followed by her mother, an aged and wrinkled crone 
with flowing white locks — a woman who could have 
played a Macbeth witch without a make-up. They said 
that the kahiina had gone to the top of a neighboring 
peak to tend his herb-garden. He sometimes remained 
away a week. The sight of silver did not tempt them to 
send for him. He must not be disturbed at his herb- 
gathering, else his charms would not work. I looked at 
the cloud-draped mountain whither this mysterious Elijah 
had retired, but it was inaccessible to man or beast. It 
was covered with a jungle of creepers, and without know- 
ing the path, it would take two weeks for a man and an 
ax to penetrate its fastnesses. The kahuna might as well 
have been in Samoa. 

Of course the women promised to send me word 
when he came down, and of course they did nothing of 
the sort. On my way through the valley I stopped at 
some of the native houses and questioned the inmates. 
They heard me with a smile and a shrug, and denied 
severally that they believed in kahunas. And yet every 
one of them, at serious illness in the family, would send 



112 HAWAII NEI 

first for the kahuna, and then for a doctor; and if the 
patient died, the blame would go to the doctor, and if he 
recovered, the credit would go to the kahuna and his 
prayers, and to the black pig of his sacrifice. 

The next hunt for a kahuna took me through city 
ways, down narrow streets and twisted turnings. It was 
almost as successful as the other. My friend the deputy- 
marshal sent me word that he had a kahuna for me. 
Before we started he showed me a stone image of Kuula, 
the fishermen's god, to whom the natives pray before 
they go fishing. It weighed two hundred pounds, and 
he had taken it from an old woman who lived out Waikiki 
way. She had treated a patient with the steeped leaves 
of the taro, and the woman had died from the effects; but 
as the kahuna was old, and the poisoning could not be 
proved, they had torn her idol from her and had bade 
her sin no more. 

The idol was about three feet high, with a rough head, 
hewn by hand. It looked inoffensive, and I failed to see 
why the woman could not keep her plaything. It could 
not possibly injure any one. In the jail-yard I saw two 
more creatures of kahunaism — two men of Kauai who 
helped to burn a woman to death at the bequest of a 
kahuna. All of which shows how sincere is the native 
disavowal of belief in these things. 

It was a long way to our kahuna's house, up and 
down dale, across Nuuanu stream, through a country 
lane sweetly bordered, and to a back gate which was 
locked. We left our carnage to climb a freshly painted 
stile, scale a gate, and thread a maze of back yards. 

At the kahuna* 's house all was quiet. The doors 
were locked and the windows closed. We peeped and 



HAWAII NEI 113 

peered, but no living thing was visible. We roused the 
neighborhood, and a friendly key gained us admittance. 
The kahuna had fled. There was his altar, hurriedly 
swept bare, and his fires still burning. The altar was 
covered with a red cloth — the priestly color since the old 
days — but not a stone god had escaped the hurried 
departure. The kahuna had left fine mats on the floor 
and his four -post koa bed, but he himself had gone. 
His gods had warned him that a foreign woman was 
coming, so he chose as his city of refuge the ex-Queen's 
garden, and as I did not care for him without his setting, 
we left him in peace. 

There is another kahuna at the other side of the town. 
We dashed across the city without noticing the trees 
glorious with the scarlet bloom of the ponciana regia. 
We scarcely dared think of our destination, for fear the 
stone gods which never sleep would warn this man too 
that we were coming. Our route took us past the old 
Kawaiaho church, in the sacred shadow of which our 
magician dwelt unafraid. We made inquiries for the 
kahuna. The natives whom we asked eyed us doubt- 
fully. They knew the man, but they thought that per- 
haps he might have moved. It was a charming study 
of loyalty — the loyalty which circumstances keep the 
natives from showing to their hereditary chiefs, and 
which they have transferred to their hereditary priests, 
whose stock is dwindling out in these aged kahunas. In 
another generation the race of the kahuna will have been 
run. Like so many other things in Hawaii, he is 
finished — pau, as the Hawaiians say. 

You will not lack for Americans to scoff at kahunas, 
and to tell you that none of those now alive is genuine. 



114 HAWAII NEI 

They will even deny that the old kahunas were ever 
sincere. It is merely a species of religious intolerance. 
Though a people of many gods, the Hawaiians had a 
fairly well-defined Trinity before the Bible came to the 
islands; and if they sacrificed human victims on their 
temple altars, was there not an Abraham ? The priests 
were a hereditary and highly revered class — sacred next 
to the kings, and sometimes much more worthy than 
royalty. In the old days they frequently took the part 
of the people against the oppression of the chiefs, and 
the temple tabus and rights of the priests did not give 
way even to the king himself. Nor is there a record of 
a single disloyal priest who ever tried to usurp kingly 
power. 

The kahunas were revered like other men who have 
the power of life and death. Even now you can see a 
trace of the old feeling as a kahunu passes on the street, 
known by the scarlet handkerchief he wears about his 
neck. Within his house he is gay as a flamingo, but on 
the street he does not dare show more than a glimpse of 
the sacerdotal color. There is no doubt that many of 
the kahunas of modern days, especially the younger 
ones, are fakirs, and dangerous ones, too. But I have 
heard of quack doctors, even in such a free and enlight- 
ened country as America, and it seems to me that these, 
in their time, have killed more patients than all the 
kahunas in Hawaii. 

At last we were before the vine-covered abode of our 
elusive quarry. I remained outside so as not to alarm 
him. Two frightened native women came to the door. 
The one we were seeking was not at home, they said. 
Questioned more closely, they protested that he was not 



HAWAII NEI 115 

a kahuna, and almost fell on their trembling knees as 
they denied that they would harbor such a one. He was 
a poor, inoffensive old man, they said. They could not 
believe that we meant him no harm, and they besought 
us to go and leave him in peace. Just then I saw a bent 
brown shape flit from the rear door and bury itself in the 
shade of the wild bananas. I felt sure it was the object 
of our search, but I had no heart to pursue him. He 
looked so dejected, and it seemed to me that we had 
done harm enough for one day. 

My next kahuna hunt took me into the hills midway 
between Honolulu and Waikiki where lives a very old 
woman versed in witchcraft and the black arts. She it 
was to whom the stone Kuula in the jail belonged, and 
her recantation and repentance were said not to have 
been even skin-deep. I had been given careful directions 
as to how to reach the place — turn to the left at the 
stone bridge under the big shade-trees, then two miles 
straight into the heart of the hills to the native village 
where Kana lived. Now, a woman kahuna is something 
of a rarity. The priests in Hawaii were all sons of 
Aaron, and the magic attributes were not supposed to 
descend to the daughters of the house. But Kana is the 
last of her race, and her fame as one able to pray to 
death an enemy and to heal the sick, has filled all the 
countryside these many years. Her patrons are many 
and her victims few. When she escaped prosecution for 
the death of the woman who died of eating the wrong 
end of the taro, she promised to turn from the evil of 
her way, but you might as well dream of turning back 
the tide of the Pacific as of keeping the natives from 
their kahunas. 



Il6 HAWAII NEI 

I found the village to be mostly whitewashed cottages 
with corrugated iron roofs, but in one of two thatched 
and tumble-down abodes Kana lived. I was too wise to 
knock. I could hear voices; so I boldly pushed open the 
door and entered. Ah, what a sight! In one corner of 
the hut was an altar covered with red calico, and on it 
were little stone gods — pieces of volcanic rock worn 
round and smooth — pitiful little Kuulas set up in place 
of the big fine one in Honolulu jail, doing penance for 
the sins of Kana. 

The only light came from burning kukui-n\iX.s and 
from a flaming rag set in a small calabash of grease in 
the old, old primitive way. And there was Kana herself, 
clad in a few yards of kapa cloth, in which she had 
wound herself after the fashion of her ancestors. From 
the waist up her shrunken body was naked, and the 
brown skin was shirred and gathered in little pleats and 
wrinkles, where the flesh had faded away beneath it. 
She was posturing before the altar, intoning a sort of 
prayer, throwing her arms above her head, and tearing at 
her wild gray locks. She was feeding awa and brandy 
to her gods, and they, being incorporeal, ate and drank 
only the aroma, leaving the awa and the strong waters 
to be absorbed by the devotee before the shrine. She 
was so engrossed that she did not see me at first, and the 
melancholy intoning and posturing continued. I learned 
afterward that she was engaged in praying some one to 
death, and that a lock of the victim's hair — the bait, as 
they call it, — reposed on the altar. 

Just then my shadow fell across the lurid shelf and 
Kana turned and saw me. With a wild shriek she 
recognized a stranger. More swiftly than I describe it, 



HAWAII NEI 117 

swifter than anything but a shaft of light, she turned and 
sped past me, out through the door and away among 
the trees, the kapa streaming behind her as she fled 
screaming like one possessed. At the sound, Kanakas 
swarmed from their huts, and for a little there was wild 
hubbub in that village. I felt as though I were in the 
heart of Africa instead of, at that moment, on American 
soil. 

We have annexed some queer things. 

But my hack-driver was within call, and I pocketed 
my fears, explaining to the natives who crowded about, 
that I meant no harm, and had accidentally disturbed the 
sorceress at her work. My third kahuna had been at 
least visible, though I had had no speech with her. I 
knew that she would steal back in the night to remove 
her gods and that that place would know her no more. 

My next kahuna came to me — in itself a suspicious 
circumstance. A gentle rat-tat came at my door, and a 
soft native voice said, "You want a kahuna?" I still 
wanted one; so I admitted the raven. He was a poor 
old man with bare feet, tattered overalls, and a ragged 
straw hat. His only decent garment was a sweater, and 
this was of kahuna red. 

I was doubtful of this uninvited guest, but he said, 
looking stealthily around, "I a great kahuna. I make 
people love you. I pray your enemies to death. You 
tell no one, for they arrest me and put me in jail." 

This was the genus kahuna, species fortune - teller. 
He asked to see my palm, and pondered long and faith- 
fully over it, muttering to himself in Hawaiian. I asked 
if I could not go to his house, but he seemed unwilling. 
I am convinced that he had none, though, perhaps, like 



Il8 HAWAII NEI 

the others, he wished to protect his altar from disturbing 
presences. He asked for a basin of water, and rejected 
several until a great bowl gave the desired flat surface. 
Then, from a lean and hungry purse, he took some 
strange flowers with an odor deadly sweet. I had never 
seen such flowers before. Throwing them in the water, 
he stirred it with a lean brown forefinger, murmuring the 
while a native prayer. A soft scum appeared on the 
water, then a film, and then a cloud, the whole taking on 
strange shapes, like vapor-forms building and unbuilding 
in the sky. Covering the water with a red silk handker- 
chief, he allowed the waves he had caused to subside and 
the ferment he had made to settle. Uncovering it, he 
pretended to read from the cloud-forms my future, telling 
me the same rosy tale that is told and re-told by fortune- 
tellers in more enlightened lands — all the things that a 
normal person is supposed to want. 

Again he dropped his voice. Had I any enemies I 
wanted prayed to death? He was a kahuna anaana, and 
could do that also, only, of course, he must do it at home 
and in secret. I refused to nominate mine enemy, but 
he insisted and seemed not to comprehend when I said 
that I thought living a worse punishment than dying. 
When he did finally understand, he seemed to think me 
scarcely a safe person to do business with. But as I 
absolutely declined to furnish the nail-paring or the lock 
of hair, without which viaima, or bait, the kahu?ia a?iaa?ia 
can do nothing, he gave me a melancholy smile and 
took his departure, but not before he had given me a 
little talismanic bag, said to be a sure prophylactic against 
evil. On dissection, I found it to contain not the vam- 
pire's "rag and a bone and a hank of hair," but a tooth 



HAWAII NEI 119 

and a bone and a pinch of sand. And when I asked his 
fee for all this rose-colored future and this talismanic pro- 
tection, he mentioned the sum of twenty-five cents. If I 
had been inclined to trust him before, that settled it. A 
decent old fellow, no doubt, made a quack by his neces- 
sities. This is the sort of kahuna the stranger must 
beware of in Honolulu. The few genuine ones in the 
city are so law-wise that no American has ever been 
admitted into their presence. All the influence in the 
world would not accomplish it; and as for their prayers, 
any of the native-born whites can recite you a yard of 
them. 

I dropped the unprofitable study of witch-doctors 
until I left Honolulu and the region where the law against 
practicing medicine without a license is vigorously en- 
forced. On the island of Hawaii, I found the very prince 
of kahunas — a dyed-in-the-wool old medicine-man, with 
all the picturesque accessories of his guild. His fame is 
as broad as the island, and from Punaluu to Hilo the 
country rings with his praises. Eighteen miles from 
Honuapo dwells Kaumualii, greatest of living kahunas, 
and last lineal descendant of the great Paao, the high 
priest who came from Tahiti in the eleventh century. 
Kaumualii has all the fame he wants, and his patients go 
to or send for him from all over the country. But he is 
full of years and honors now, and perhaps by this writing, 
the famous king of kahunas, Hawaii's Old Man of the 
Mountain, is dead. 

My hostess, whose father was a chief, and whose house 
is always honored when royalty journeys that way, took 
me to him. Driving straight into the mountains from the 
prosperous plantation-house, we came suddenly upon the 



120 HAWAII NEI 

most charming of native villages, nestling in a crotch of 
the hills, a village so picturesque, so primitive, so old, and 
so unsullied by the new, that I, who had given up finding 
anything unspoiled in Hawaii, quite lost my breath. It 
was a prosperous-looking place, in spite of its brownness 
and its air of the antique, and here, untouched by civili- 
zation, lives the prince of kahunas, the last of his race in 
Hawaii. 

The natives told me all about him — how he was the 
chief man of the village, how he doctored them in illness, 
and how he advised them in time of stress. He is so 
honest that when they take him money for his ministra- 
tions he lays it on the altar, and if, after praying, the 
gods refuse to listen, and he can do nothing for them, he 
returns the money. Could any licensed practitioner do 
more? 

The Hawaiian belief was, and to a large extent still 
is, that all forms of sickness and disease are caused by evil 
spirits. With these spirits the kahu?ias hold communica- 
tion, hence their power. The most advanced Hawaiians 
have grown away from the superstition, but the tenacity 
of it in country districts is as amazing as are some 
cherished superstitions of our own land. 

I was received at the kahuna's house with the simple 
dignity of a man who wears only a breech-clout of red, 
but considers it full-dress. He was very old — so old that 
he had lost his majestic straightness of back, which in a 
Hawaiian is the last thing to go. Over his knees the 
dark skin wrinkled deeply, while his sparse gray hairs fell 
over his meager shoulders. But his eyes were piercing 
as a hawk's, black and fearless, as though accustomed to 
look unblinking into the future. 



HAWAII NEI 121 

I had heard of one woman whom this old man had 
recently prayed, not to death, but into a madhouse — 
and when I saw his eyes, I did not wonder that she went 
down under their baleful gleam. The woman in the 
asylum had a dispute over land with another. The 
insane woman won the case, and her defeated opponent 
threatened openly to have Kaumualii pray the successful 
litigator to death. The threat was quite enough. In all 
"praying to death," suggestion plays a large part. The 
prospective victim was a Christian, and educated. Her 
friends and relatives reasoned and argued with her in 
Vain. She worried over it, grew thinner and weaker, 
and finally lost her reason. Such cases are not at all rare 
in Hawaii. 

Skeptics say that vegetable poisons figure actively in 
these "prayings to death," and that the kahunas were, 
and are, professional murderers, learned as the Borgias in 
all deadly arts. Kaumualii is supposed to have in his 
possession a portion of the poison -tree famed in Ha- 
waiian annals. On that point alone he was silent. 

But there were other and pleasanter things to hear of 
this old man marvelous — how he had made the dead 
come back to their old habitations by catching the 
departed spirit and forcing it back into the dead body. 
I asked him to do it, that I might see, but he said that 
there was no one dead in the village, and that it was only 
occasionally the gods would permit him to so upset the 
scheme of the universe. But he would tell me his 
methods. 

The manner is as old as the story of Lazarus, and 
fabulous tales of it have come down from the earliest 
Hawaiian days. First, catch your spirit; next, pry up 



122 HAWAII NEI 

the nail of the great toe, slip the spirit underneath, and 
begin a vigorous massage. There is great difficulty in 
getting the spirit past the ankle and knee-joints, but 
vigorous rubbing will do it. At last, when the spirit 
reaches the heart, that organ begins to beat again and 
the deed is done, the dead one is raised up. There is 
no doubt that certain cases of suspended animation have 
been successfully treated in this fashion, hence the super- 
stition. The massage to restore the circulation is the 
most vigorous process imaginable. It is seldom resorted 
to in later days, and when unsuccessful, the kahuna lays 
the blame to the gods, which is a very convenient and 
simple device, and not confined to Polynesia. 

The gods of Kaumualii were ordinary, and his prayers 
unintelligible, but his glance burned like fire, and his 
touch was like the pricking of electric needles. He had 
the pagan indifference to death, and I wondered if the 
Christian doctrine of future punishment had aught to do 
with the fearsome dying of the West. The old kahuna^ 
with his old gods and his old ways, seemed the better 
philosopher. 

Very soon those who call the kahunas poisoners will 
need to seek new texts. The sorcerer-priests are passing 
from Hawaii as they passed long ago from Europe, and 
as the witch craze passed from America. Far be it from 
those who have the Salem page in their history to throw 
the first stone. 




The Diver. 



HAWAII NEI I23 



CHAPTER XI 

THE DIVER 

I was up with the sun, or before him, which is difficult in 
more northern lands, but easy enough in this, and because 
I was an early bird I had the proverbial reward. The 
worm came in a canoe to the side of the steamer, rocking 
idly on the smooth water that laps Hawaii's lee. In the 
background was a pretty village of green and brown, 
with waving cocoanut tops and a white, incongruous New 
England steeple pricking through the green and aspiring 
heavenward in a place where earth is beautiful enough to 
make pagans of us all. 

My friend, the missionary, deeply learned in Hawaiian 
lore and somewhat tolerant of affection for the Polyne- 
sian, was at my side and caught for me the brown old 
fisher, who came sweeping himself over the glassy swell 
with a paddle for all the world like a broom — a sort of 
Mr. Aleshine, by my faith. 

There ensued a conversation in Hawaiian between the 
spectacled scholar on deck and the fisherman with bright 
old eyes, once brown, but now faded and rimmed with 
violet. Hawaiian conversation ripples on in vowels inter- 
minable, with a meager consonant here and there by way 
of guide-post. The traveler was asking the fisherman if 
he would take the foreign woman to fish with him, and 
the fisher was saying that he would — for a consideration. 



124 HAWAII NEI 

Our communication was confined to salutations. I 
could say "aloha" and he "good-by," and so we formed 
a conversational equation. Before the sun had so much 
as shown the rim of his rosy face, I was over the side and 
down the steep ladder to where the canoe lay rocking. 
My friends, not missionaries, did not wholly approve. 

"He may hold you up," they suggested, heartlessly; 
4 ■ best leave your purse aboard. ' ' 

Other friendly advice in this wise was shouted after me 
as I went down. Happily my fisherman was deaf to 
American gibes. I did not think of faltering, and went 
straight on to where the tiny boat rose to meet me and 
then dropped away a few feet, and selecting the proper 
moment, half leaped, half fell into the canoe. It was 
scarce twenty inches wide, hollowed out of a single trunk, 
and it dated from those wondrous days when the war 
fleets of Kamehameha crossed the sea in swarms — just 
such fragile little canoes as these in the choppy inter-island 
channels. On one side was an outrigger, made of limbs, 
giving the boat a marvelous steadiness. The old man 
beamed at me from the other end, and if we could not 
converse, we could at least smile and beck and nod, and 
use our hands — his eloquent, mine awkward, in the lan- 
guage of good will that is universal. 

The broom-like paddle scooped us along with amazing 
velocity. The boat was barely wide enough for me to 
sit, and I heard dimly behind me, as we left the steamer 
astern: 

"He'll be as modest as most fishermen." 

It was the voice of the missionary, and I smiled at 
the inherited prudishness of Boston, lasting through two 
generations. I had heard of black bottles, and of fishes 



HAWAII NEI 12 







caught with a silver hook. A propensity for falsifying I 
knew of, but I did not recollect any brand of modesty 
belonging peculiarly to fishermen. Presently the words 
came back to me. 

My boatman's name was Kupaka, and I thought that 
if he showed an intention to do me to death or take me 
where I did not wish to go, I should conjure him by call- 
ing his name thrice in a loud tone of voice. But he was 
mild as honeydew, and my word, which he did not 
understand, was his law. 

The ship we had left behind assumed trim lines, and 
details faded out. She was a mile astern when a queer 
thing happened. Kupaka stood up at his end of the 
boat and took off his hat, and I discovered that he was 
going back to that stage of undressed blessedness which 
existed before the missionaries came. It was all very 
deftly done. It reminded me of that painful moment at 
the circus when the tight-rope walker, ascending to his 
perch in street- clothes, slides out of them as a snake 
sheds his skin, only to emerge in pink tights. Remem- 
bering the ultimate pink tights, with a faith born of many 
circuses, I waited, and presently Kupaka, who had never 
once glanced at me, and who had behaved as though dis- 
robing on the high seas was the most common thing in 
life, emerged in a beautiful brown skin, with a red malo 
neatly and becomingly knotted around him, and made me 
ashamed of my doubts and my self-consciousness. 

He was an old man — sixty-two, he told me after- 
ward — and his head was quite bald on top and what was 
left of his hair was gray, but his brown skin was of satiny 
texture and fitted him smoothly as a boy's. Seeing 
Kupaka in a malo, and seeing Kupaka in his clothes, a 



126 HAWAII XEI 

lean, unslippered pantaloon, I wondered that he had ever 
been prevailed upon to adopt our garments and decrease 
his attractiveness by a full hundred per cent. While I 
was thinking these thoughts, Kupaka paddled slowly. 
Behind us the sun was coming up above the long slope 
of Hualalai mountain, making the water into a huge 
silver platter. I was lost in the beauty of the sun and 
the exquisite green landscape that had suddenly been 
gilded in all its high lights, but Kupaka had his eyes 
bent on the green water. It seemed to be about twelve 
feet deep where we were, a bright, delicate green, and so 
clear that you could see the jagged top of the reef, which 
even-where, except where the fresh streams have flowed 
from the mountains and killed it, guards these beautiful 
shores. 

Kupaka stood upright and laid down his paddle. By 
this time we were on the reef and almost in the breakers, 
and I was wondering if my meager skill at canoeing 
would suffice to take me back to where the Mauna Loa 
rode so securely at anchor. Suddenly Kupaka made an 
exclamation that was principally a grunt. He seized in 
his left hand a small net, stiffened at the top like a butterfly 
net, and in his right hand a long palm-leaf, something the 
worse for wear. He stepped on the edge of the canoe, 
the out-rigger mercifully balancing us, and, hovering 
there for an instant, dived over the edge, palm-leaf, net, 
and all. Fascinated, I too gazed into the green depths. 
I could see him going down, down, the brown legs 
jerking out behind him with a froglike motion. I saw a 
school of unconscious fish. They were playing in the 
reef, darting out and in of what may have been their 
cave dwellings, for aught I know, recking nothing of this 



HAWAII NEI 127 

robber of the reef. Down, down, down, Kupaka went, 
and I who had been breathless, began to count slowly, in 
time to the ticking of a watch. Kupaka was doing queer 
things in these interminable seconds. He was using his 
palm-leaf as housewives use fly-brushes. He was actually 
dusting the reef, and brushing the little fish into the open 
mouth of his net, which he held in the other hand. My 
monotonous counting had progressed to sixty and I 
feared for the breath of my fisherman. At last the 
surface rippled, and the bald brown head came out. As 
soon as his mouth was above water, Kupaka gave a yell 
that was a war-whoop loud enough to wake the echoes in 
the distant rocks. He was treading water now, his eyes 
red from being open under water, and his lungs drinking 
in the blessed air. The palm-leaf and the net were still 
in his hand, and with them he swam to the boat, for he 
had come up at some distance from the place where he 
went down, and the canoe had drifted while I, absorbed, 
watched this wonderful performance on the reef. 

Signaling to me to bend over the outrigger, and thus 
trim the boat, he climbed in, and for the first time I saw 
what manner of sea-treasures he had brought back. He 
had seven fish in his net, and he counted them slowly 
aloud. He was proud of them, and no wonder. There 
were six manini, a reef-fish of delicate flavor and a beau- 
tiful striped body of white and black, and one kihikihi or 
sea-cock, most exquisite of reef denizens. This fish is 
round as a balloon, with broad transverse bands of black 
and canary, and a long transparent ribbon, attached to 
the nose. The hues of a yellowjacket or a gorgeous Japa- 
nese butterfly are his, and in the water the long pale rib- 
bon floating from the nose makes a train of iridescence. 



128 HAWAII NEI 

After a while the long gelatinous ribbon dries up, but the 
delicate colors of the sea-cock never fade. He is far too 
beautiful to eat. Who would not be beautiful, spending 
a life under the warm, bright water, sporting in coral 
groves ? 

Six times in half an hour Kupaka spied fish and 
descended to their realm, his smallest catch being three. 
Each time he came up puffing, but with breath enough to 
give the tremendous shout with which his lungs rejoiced 
again to be in their own element. At last the canoe was 
carpeted with shiny creatures, beautiful as humming- 
birds or butterflies, and we paddled back to the Mauna 
Loa where prosaic people were eating prosaic breakfasts, 
and the missionary was waiting to ask how I enjoyed my 
fishing trip. 

I begged him to ask Kupaka to sit still for a moment. 
I had tried many times to take his picture as he went 
over the side with his palm-leaf fan and his netted ululu, 
but he had always been too quick for me or the rising sun 
had been shining straight into my camera's eye. When 
he was made to understand, Kupaka was delighted to be 
photographed, dripping malo, polished skin, and all. 

Twice again I saw him. That afternoon I visited him 
at his cottage, a neat frame house, with a basement where 
the family lives, and an upper story, reached by outside 
stairs, where they entertain guests. They thought it as 
strange that I should be more interested in the common 
basement than in the conventional upper rooms as my 
American friends thought it strange that I should care to 
go to the house at all. 

Kupaka the host is interesting, but Kupaka the fisher, 
in his canoe and his mala, is infinitely more so. He is in 



HAWAII NEI 129 

his native element in the water, and the house and the 
civilized garb fit him not at all. The rooms are a dream 
of fine mats, in which my feet sank inches deep. He 
showed me his ancestral pipe, handed down from gener- 
ations, and in use just at that moment between the lips 
of his wife, Makahai. He showed me his many and 
wonderful hooks, each to suit the taste of a different fish, 
his wonderful bait, some of sea-eggs and some of sea- 
weed especially prepared. He showed me his spear 
with which he dives into the water and spears fish from 
below, sometimes impaling two and three in a single 
lunge. Then he took me upstairs and showed me the 
carved four-poster koa bed in the room that is to spare, 
and where he told me, through the missionary, I should 
sleep when I came to visit them, and I promised him 
that I would surely come, perfidious wretch that I am! 
I saw on his walls the photographs of Kalakaua and 
Liliuokalani and Lunalilo, through all of whose reigns 
and more Kupaka has lived. There was also a picture 
of Kaiulani, in whom the hopes of the Hawaiians were 
bound up, and of whom he said something with tears in 
his eyes — something that my missionary friend forgot 
to translate. 

I was allowed to peep into the umu, or underground 
oven, outside where the taro and the fish for Kupaka' s 
household are baked in #- leaves; and I was allowed to 
make a picture of his granddaughter, who came riding 
astride on a little burro which took the stone fence as 
easily as if it had been a hurdle. After tasting of all 
these family secrets, I was decked with a lei of tube- 
rose — a yard of concentrated perfume — and allowed to 
go with the distinct promise that I should come again 



I3O HAWAII XEI 

some day and be their guest and go fishing even- morn- 
ing over the reef, where Kupaka gravely informed me 
that he sometimes got sixty* fish at a single catch, where- 
upon I recognized him as a true fisherman and a member 
of the universal brotherhood. They followed me down 
to the stone stile, all of them, and we parted with mutual 
protestations of affection. I presume I could have been 
adopted into the family had I cared to stay, and I must 
say that I parted from Kupaka with sincere regret 

Afterward I found him to be the last of the Mohi- 
cans — the last of those expert fishermen who once 
haunted the reef on Hawaii's lee. The new generation 
is lazily content to sit in a boat and fish with rod and 
line, and in a few years the lonely reef will know no 
more the dextrous brown men who came down to rob 
the nests of the fish. 

Later I was again off that very spot near Kailua, on 
the Kona coast, where I first met Kupaka. There was 
no time to go to the house nor to sleep in the koa bed 
under the picture of Kaiulani, for civilization was calling 
me and I was soon to leave natureland. So I avoided 
Kupaka and skulked by groups where I thought he 
might be; for I knew if he saw me he would attempt to 
carr\' me off — he and Makahai, his wife — and that 
American protests and explanations would be in vain. 

I thought I was safe. I was in a great boat, crowded 
with passengers, midway between the landing and the 
Kinau, and in a few moments I would have been safe. 
The Kinau was steaming and puffing to be gone. The 
whistle had blown, and we were the last boat. In a few 
moments we would be up and away, and I should be 
gazing my last at Kailua, which I had grown to love 



HAWAII NEI 131 

very much indeed. Just then, as I was saying a silent 
farewell to the pretty bay and the distant cot of Kupaka, 
a slender canoe came alongside. There was Kupaka in 
the full glory of his wardrobe of three pieces, trousers, 
shirt, and hat. I sank down in the boat behind a stout 
gentleman with broad shoulders, but too late. Kupaka' s 
canoe dropped astern, for we had a dozen oarsmen at 
least. All at once he saw me. He greeted me with that 
fierce yell with which he always rose with his prey from 
the sea, and then he began paddling for dear life and 
closing the distance between us. It was no use. We 
reached the Kinau first, and I was the first one up the 
stairs — fleeing from the fatal fascination of barbarism. 
The simple life was so pleasant and easy, that I was 
afraid I might spend my life without regret in sleepy 
Kailua and be regularly adopted among the other grand- 
children of Kupaka. He came to the side of the 
steamer, took off his hat, stood up in the boat and held 
out his hands imploringly, asking me in a hundred 
melodious words why I had not come to the cottage as I 
had promised. He promised to fish early and late, and 
all day if I liked, and Makahai would cook the fish the 
way I liked them best, and I should ride on his grand- 
daughter's burro, and the cottage at Kailua should be 
mine to do as I liked with. Had I dared to look back, I 
should have been lost as irretrievably as Lot's wife. So 
I hardened my heart, and left him pleading. 



132 HAWAII NEI 



CHAPTER XII 

PICTURESQUE OAHU 

Ever since the first whites came to Honolulu, the Pali 
trip has been the famous excursion, and so it will remain 
as long as there is an eye that loves a view or a heart to 
be moved by a magnificent outlook. I had thought that 
the prospect from the castle-walls of Chapultepec, over- 
looking the broad and populous valley of Mexico, was 
the most beautiful of my seeing, but even this famous pic- 
ture pales in the light that streams from the Pali. The 
Pali view is not of white cities and of the works of man, 
but a scene of nature's handiwork, and it must have been 
as beautiful as it is now since first Oahu, like Venus, rose 
from the sea, and drew over herself the green mantle that 
now covers her. A red road winding below in snarls 
impossible to untangle, cane plantations plotted in fresh, 
pale greens, the distant Mormon settlement with its white 
houses, and a straggling village that is called a town, are 
part of a view which would be quite as beautiful without 
them. 

The road up the Pali has been built at government 
expense, and the cost per square yard is ascertainable. 
Personally, I am not interested in road construction, 
except to be glad that the road is built. Indeed, I would 
cheerfully walk up the Pali if there were no other way. 
Walking parties go up almost every day, and bicycles 



HAWAII NEI 133 

make the tour, though it is by no means a good route for 
wheeling, being rocky from Honolulu to the summit, and 
a stiff climb, with a swift descent down the other side. 
The Pali road leads through Nuuanu Valley, most famous 
of Honolulu dales. It was settled by early foreign resi- 
dents, and some of the finest gardens and most comfort- 
able homes are still to be found there. Many of the trees 
are not indigenous, and the whole valley is a mass of sun- 
saturated foliage. The Nuuanu Valley is that famous 
place where it rains on one side of the street and shines 
on the other, and a half-dozen rainbows are frequently 
tangled there at one time. We look in astonishment at 
the lacelike foliage of the algaroba, the mesquite of the 
Southwest, with its sweet pods that cattle love. Except 
for it and the Australian eucalyptus, that nomad among 
the trees, there is no growth that is familiar. The hau- 
tree is in blossom, its flowers like pale-yellow poppies, 
all of crape, with brown velvet centers. The tree is 
not good for anything, and like many other absolutely 
good-for-nothing things in this world, is very good to 
look at. It is too crooked to be used for firewood, and 
it helps to form dense thickets, when knit together with 
a prolific trailer and the wild morning-glory, through 
which nothing except a man with an ax can go, and he 
but slowly. There are plenty of these absolutely impass- 
able thickets up this road in the Nuuanu Valley. 

This is the place to see the perfection of the bread- 
fruit-tree, which sounds so Edenic and absolutely deli- 
cious. It has always reminded me of the manna that 
fell upon the children of Israel, which tasted like anything 
you please — ice-cream and candy to some, and caviar 
sandwiches and salad to others. The breadfruit is a 



134 HAWAII NEI 

superb tree, often sixty feet high, with leaves a foot 
broad, sharply cut, dark-green and shining, and of 
exceedingly beautiful form. The pale-green fruit comes 
out in daintiest contrast. Then there is the papaya, with 
its soft indented stem, which runs up to a height of from 
fifteen to thirty feet, to be crowned by a circle of large 
indented leaves with long foot-stalks, and among, as well 
as considerably below them, the fruit in all stages of 
development. Some of it is always ripe, bright yellow, 
and about the size of a muskmelon. Above all are the 
slender shafts of the coco-palm, bending in imaginary 
breezes, and waving plumes and perpetual fruitage. 
Every house has its natural lawn, with ferns from Hawaii, 
bright - colored foliage plants, an abundance of flowers, 
especially lilies, and fragrant climbers, such as stepha- 
notis, clematis, and jasmine. Whole hedges are of night- 
blooming cereus, and it is one of the sights to come up 
when the huge white cacti are in bloom. Everything is 
found except the rose and the violet. The roses are all 
killed by a Japanese beetle, and violets are the objects of 
tenderest solicitude. 

The road leads past the royal mausoleums, where the 
Kamehamehas and the Keaweaheulus rest in peace, and 
also past the foreign cemetery. Higher up come taro- 
patches, each plant growing on a small hillock surrounded 
by water, and houses where fruit is for sale at little 
stands. In the distance are small gray -green patches 
which are pineapple-fields, and excellent pineapples are 
for sale at the gates at five cents apiece. There are figs 
and grapes, imported by the Portuguese who are not 
happy without their own vines and fig-trees. Now and 
then you pass a native's cottage, with a taro-\>aXch. and 



HAWAII NEI 135 

a large bed of carnations — red, pink, and white — 
cultivated for the lei trade. An occasional white flag 
indicates a poi factory. Native girls on horseback, one 
behind the other, with bare feet in Mexican stirrups, lets 
around neck and hair, and saddle-bags in front of them, 
dash past. Women in holokus, with bare feet, ride past, 
all of them astride. The young Kanaka girls are visions 
of white teeth, bright eyes, fresh flowers, and bare legs. 
Along the sides of the road are native women in clean 
holokus^ with bright red hibiscus flowers in their hair, 
quite in the old style. This is the country. 

In the region of perpetual showers, the ground is 
covered with a fine grass, brilliant as Kentucky blue- 
grass, but of a more tender springlike green. It is really 
a turf, and it covers the bare brown backs of the hills 
and hides the savage marks of primitive volcanoes. Near 
by are little dales filled with ferns, their long fronds 
tipped with brown and red. The young leaves, not yet 
unfolded, are crimson. Everywhere is the candlenut, the 
wild banana, and a few coco-palms — natives of Oahu — 
mixed with yellow flowers that look and smell like 
yuccas, but are not. A few natives live in this higher 
part of the valley, and little brown boys pick the yellow 
flowers, and may be seen almost hidden in the long grass 
in which they have made hollows like birds' - nests, 
stringing the odorous blossoms into leis. 

The road becomes rockier and steeper, the ferns and 
thickets more numerous, the cultivated places fewer, and 
long wisps of waterfalls slide silently over the precipice. 
There is a quiet lake of a reservoir, and here the chill 
breeze from over the Pali strikes you, and you put on a 
wrap for the first time since arriving in Honolulu. The 



I36 HAWAII NEI 

branches of the trees have clothed themselves in heavy 
garments of moss, and are garlanded with big blue 
morning-glories; streams dash along by the roadside, 
and the cool green wilderness seems like the temperate 
zone. In these altitudes all moisture is condensed, and 
the warm steam of Honolulu is utterly forgotten. The 
valley narrows and the mountains close in like walls. The 
gray rock rises suddenly from a sea of green, quite bare 
and naked to its summit, which is broken up into pinna- 
cles and needles. 

A thousand feet below you lies Honolulu-by-the-sea, 
a fringe of masts in the bay, and Diamond Head in the 
distance. The colors are beautiful, from the pea-green 
water near the shore, to the purples and reds beyond 
where the surf breaks white over the coral reef that pro- 
tects the shore better than any armed fleet could do. 
Suddenly a cold and boisterous wind seizes you. 
Through a gash in the rocks, you come suddenly upon 
the wonderful view of windward Oahu. It is the top of 
Pali. The picture is framed at either side with immense 
masses of black, ferruginous volcanic rock, nearly per- 
pendicular for hundreds of feet. It extends on either 
side for miles, this backbone of the island, a lofty mass 
of rock with a top broken into strange and fantastic 
peaks and pinnacles, as though Nature had blown hot 
and blown cold, and left this mass of molten material to 
cool as it would. The Pali is a wall from the windward 
side, without the gradual approach that leads from Hon- 
olulu. It is buttressed by nature, and these buttresses 
are covered with green. Huge trees on the floor of the 
plain look like moss from this altitude. It is like the 
Palisades along the Hudson, only infinitely more rugged 



HAWAII NEI 137 

and fierce. Far beyond is the ocean with a ridge of 
smaller hills along its edge, and the plains between, said 
to have been originally the bottom of an ocean lake, 
were filled in long since by the waste from the huge 
carcass of the Pali. 

Windward Oahu is fascinating. Spread out below 
are considerable hills that become mere green ripples 
upon the surface of the earth, as though a wind had 
blown and ruffled the liquid land into tiny wavelets. The 
new road, a long red ribbon, winds down the mountain 
sides, picking its way and tying itself into bow-knots. 
The stretch below is fringed with coco-palms and clothed 
in green. The pale green marks the sugar plantations, 
with here and there the tall stack of a mill. There are 
white houses, and paths cut through dense thickets that 
guard the virgin soil. Far away, level as mirrors and 
placid as lakes, are the rice-fields, where blue sheets of 
water are traced with the green lines of the grasslike 
plants. From this height, the rice itself is invisible, 
except for the green tinge it gives to the water. It is an 
enchanted region, shut in by a wall of rock and an 
ocean of indigo. Some fragmentary islands dot the 
coast. Kanehe Bay is cut out with a long inland sweep, 
and Kanaloa Head, and Mokapu Point, are almost as 
beautiful as Diamond Head. The ocean, guiltless of 
sails, stretches in unruffled miles. Its coloring is exqui- 
site — pale bright green near land, deepening to purple 
and red a little way out, then blue to the horizon. The 
coral reef, with its white and wavy line of endless surf, 
borders the other side of this dream country. 

Just at hand a shelf of falling rock shows where the 
frightfully steep bridle-path, which was the only road for 



I30 HAWAII NEI 

ages, went down. It was said that no one but a drunken 
man could drive down this trail, and there is a tradition 
that such a one once took four horses down in safety. 
Mounted natives, guiding loaded pack-animals, and men 
in carts used to go over it, in spite of the fact that it has 
a slope of nearly forty-five degrees. 

The Pali is the scene of one of the historic tragedies 
of this island. It was here that the forces of the last 
King of Oahu were driven over the precipice by Kame- 
hameha the Great, who combined all the island sovereign- 
ties in his own person. Some seven thousand natives 
were forced up the Pali, over which they threw them- 
selves in despair and madness, leaving Kamehameha 
master of the island. This is not a fable, for skulls are 
still picked up at the foot of the Pali, eight hundred feet 
below, and it used to be a pastime with Honolulu boys 
to go over the Pali on skull hunts. 

There is a queer current of wind to study. It has 
been known to catch an untethered hat, carry it a hun- 
dred feet below the edge of the Pali, bring it back to 
hold it tantalizingly suspended in air above the owner's 
head and then deposit it gently on the road some fifty 
feet ahead. These antics are not played every day, and 
I would not advise an extravagant risking of hats in the 
pastime, but it is an interesting and quite common phe- 
nomenon. 

The drive down is delightful, and much quicker than 
than the journey up. Most people go part way down 
the Pali on the other side, and by starting very early in 
the morning with a good team and a brake, I am told 
that the trip from ocean to ocean and back may be made 
in a day. Standing on the Pali, with the Pacific behind 



HAWAII NEI 139 

you and the Pacific before you, you feel for the first time 
the smallness of the island. A sense of insecurity and 
distance never felt on a continent comes over you. 

I turned my back on the Pali with distinct regret. In 
an instant the rugged gap in the hills closed, the rock 
curtain fell, and the view was blotted out. It was almost 
as though I had not peeped into dreamland, after all. To 
see this vision and not to go down into it, is like Moses 
having his glimpse of the promised land. As for me, I 
did not wish to go down. I would rather have my mind- 
picture of this spread-out loveliness than test its details 
for myself. The near-by view of the cane and rice, with 
bent-backed laborers sweating in the one, and patient, 
weary Chinese oxen, shaped like hippopotami, with cen- 
turies of ill-usage in their sad eyes, ploughing knee-deep 
in the mud of the other, would not be half as charming 
as the panorama from the calm, clear heights above. It 
is not well to explore dreams by daylight. 

There are several other valley drives beside the one up 
Nuuanu. The roads are indifferently good, but each valley 
has its own particular charm, and each is beautiful. 

The famous road to Waikiki is in the other direction 
from the Pali, a long, level, well-made causeway, ideal 
for bicycling, and with Kapiolani Park, Sans Souci, or 
Diamond Head as objective points. It is a fine climb- 
into the ashy crater of Diamond Head, with a magnifi- 
cent reward for the fatigue. All along the Waikiki sands 
are hospitable villas and splendid beaches, where the 
bathing is the best in the world. If you care to walk 
by the beach beyond Diamond Head, you will cross an 
old battle-field, and if the tide is right, there may be rich 
treasure-trove in the shape of bleached and whitened 



I40 HAWAII NEI 

bones. I know a cabinet where the lower jaw of a fine 
young brave, every tooth white and perfect, is one of the 
treasures. This was a find on this very beach at the foot 
of Diamond Head. 

But even more interesting are the bones of those who 
died in the ordinary way, though war itself was ordinary 
in those far-off days. To find those you must seek out 
the burial-caves, concerning which the most extraordinary 
ignorance prevails in Honolulu. Ask for a burial-cave, 
and your hearers will look as though they had never heard 
of such a thing, and will assure you that the natives kept 
those things profoundly secret, and that there is not 
one within a radius of ten miles of Honolulu. Do 
not believe them. In a brief residence in Honolulu I 
found three, and there may be thirty in the vicinage for 
aught I know. There are some good caves on Judd 
street, but, being the most accessible, they have been 
rifled by residents and visitors, until now there is nothing 
to pay for the dirty trip. There was a very famous head 
in this cave — a Bismarckian visage, where the skin had 
dried and left fierce eyebrows clinging to the frontal bone. 
Some vandal took this to adorn a mantelpiece — or a 
tale. 

Near Diamond Head are some good burial -caves, 
comparatively accessible and with many bones and much 
mouldering kapa; but the best caves of all are at Moana 
Lua (the two seas), where famous sacrifices were made in 
the old days, and where the beautiful country-place of 
Minister Damon now stands. The caves are some dis- 
tance behind and above the Damon place, over a hilly 
road for a mile, and then across the fields and up a hill- 
side, when a close search must be made for the entrance. 



HAWAII NEI 141 

These caves are hard for a novice to find, since the 
mouths are low and unobtrusive, and, seemingly, too 
small for a human being to crawl through. The idea of 
the burial-cave was secret interment. Great care was 
taken to keep the place of entombment a secret, and the 
more important the dead the greater the secrecy. It is 
told of one chief — a true story — that he begged a faith- 
ful retainer to dispose of his bones, so that no one would 
ever find them to make fish-hooks of them — the most 
deadly insult that could befall a chief. The retainer 
promised. He scraped the flesh from the bones, as was 
the custom, reduced the bones to powder and mixed it 
with the pot to be eaten by the chiefs at a certain coun- 
cil. When asked if he had disposed of the bones, the 
retainer said that he had, and mentioned that they were 
already in the stomachs of the various chiefs. It is not 
related that any one was shocked or ill, but merely that 
the hearers applauded the old man's cleverness. 

There is a landmark near the burial-caves of Moana 
Lua. Near the entrance is a pile of bleaching bones on 
a high shelf of rock. They came there in an odd way. 
Years ago there was a chief in this valley who held a 
large number of hostages. In a fit of anger the chief 
slew the hostages, whose lives he had sworn to preserve. 
By way of retaliation, the chief whose subjects had been 
slain came down into that smiling valley and killed all of 
the inhabitants who did not flee. Their bones were 
piled on a shelf of rock as a warning, and remain there 
to this day. 

Near these bones are the burial-caves. The opening 
is not over two feet high by perhaps three in breadth, 
and the marvel is how these mummies were ever taken 



142 HAWAII NEI 

into the caves, or the bulky coffins that were used at a 
later date. The conclusion is that the mouth of the cave 
was partially walled up after the caves were full. For at 
least ten feet one crawls on hands and knees, sometimes 
lying flat to rest. A man with a bicycle-lamp leads on 
before, but the faint glimmer does not amount to an 
illumination, and the lamp only serves to eat up what 
little oxygen there is. 

Once through the narrow entrance the cave opens up, 
and three people, grimy with smoke and dust, seat them- 
selves on three coffins and look about. A gruesome 
business this! One feels like a ghoul, and instinctively 
drops the voice, though these ears have not heard for 
centuries. There are three separate caves, with artificial 
stone walls built up between them. We climb over 
the walls, slip shudderingly on coffins and bones, and 
wonder how these good people ever expect to untangle 
themselves on the Judgment Day. It is close and dark, 
and there is a faint stifling odor. At last we reach the 
furthest cave of the three, though there are indications 
that this is not the last, but that other similar caverns 
extend into the hill, literally honeycombing it. But the 
third cave satisfies us and we decide to penetrate no 
further. I have seen the mummies of Guanajuato, but 
they are friendly and human compared to this medley of 
the dead. The third cave is evidently the oldest. It was 
filled first and then walled up, and the dead of the next 
century were put in the next cave, and so on. The 
bones are quite white and clean. It was the Hawaiian 
custom to clean the skeleton before putting it away, or 
else to salt and dry the body in a species of embalming. 

The bones were scattered all over the place. There 



HAWAII NEI 143 

were quantities of separate feet, and hands, and skulls, 
with mouldering bits of kapa y ill-smelling and damp with 
the moisture of the terrible place. Everybody took as a 
souvenir some bone that could be spared. A very dainty 
little foot — that of a child or young woman — was given 
to me. There were no traces of calabashes or spears, 
though we made nothing but a superficial search. 

The fumes from my flash-lights made the air of the 
inner chamber unbreathable, and we were forced to retreat 
toward the entrance. In the second cave the bones, 
skulls > and kapa were the same, except that the kapa was 
in better condition. You could trace the pattern that had 
been painted on it. 

In the outermost cave, nearest the entrance, the bones 
were much newer and the kapa much more unpleasant to 
smell. There were coffins in this place, most of them 
empty. They were plain, made of koa, and had lost 
their polish, if they ever had any. They had been elab- 
orately ornamented with iron handles and trimmings, in 
ludicrous imitation of ours, but these had rusted and 
were dropping from the wood. All these coffins were 
lined with thick, soft kapa, and little tufted pillows of it 
were all over the floor. Some of the coffins stood upright 
around the edge with bodies inside, wrapped like mum- 
mies in innumerable folds of kapa. Other coffins, with 
significant-looking bundles, were lying on the ground. 
Some were overturned and the bodies spilled out, and I 
was told that a mummy had been recently taken from 
these caves to the Smithsonian Institution. 

Stifled and just a bit nervous because of the uncanny 
surroundings, afraid to look behind us to where the third 
cavern loomed, laughing at each other and making 



144 HAWAII NEI 



strange, hollow noises, we left the caves in single file, the 
little bicycle lamp fluttering and sputtering and gasping 
for oxygen, and our own faces grimy and black. 

My pilfered trophy was placed on my lanai, and that 
night I had the troubled slumber that befits a robber of 
graves. I dreamed that the sweet young Kanaka girl to 
whom the foot belonged, hobbled in with it in her hand, 
and reproached me. 

Next morning when I went to my la?iai, the foot was 
gone. No one knew anything about it — no one had 
seen it. The soft turf showed no traces of foot-prints. 
It is my individual opinion that the foot walked the long 
twelve miles to Moana Lua, and that it will be found in 
the cave that is its rightful owner's home. 



. 



HAWAII NEI I45 



CHAPTER XIII 

in Hawaii's lee 

To end one's journey at Honolulu would be to know 
nothing of the Hawaiian islands. The capital is as cos- 
mopolitan as all seaports. After all, the country's the 
place to study. Of course, Kilauea is the objective 
point — there is something to fascinate even about a 
quiescent volcano, and no one can afford to miss the 
sight of one of the earth's breathing-places. There are 
ways and ways to go. One is short and one is long, and 
the professional globe-trotter will always choose the 
shorter; but it is the long way, down Hawaii's lee, that 
gives the most interesting sights and scenes of all the 
islands. In the Kona district live the natives of purest 
blood. There has been less mixture of race here than 
elsewhere, and the Kanaka has married a woman of his 
own race, and has multiplied. You are astonished at 
the number of little brown children that greet you at the 
landings. The men and women are happy and flower- 
trimmed. What do they care for changing governments 
and altered flags ? They are safe and sheltered and far 
away. 

There is much talk in Honolulu of choppy channels 
and the sickness of the sea, and, in truth, the sea is not 
a mill-pond. But the Mauna Loa, which travels this 
way every ten days, laden with passengers and freight, is 



I46 HAWAII NEI 

a stanch little boat, and as comfortable as any steamer 
in the world. When she was built the despised passen- 
ger was considered. The staterooms are large, and the 
dining-room is on the upper deck, which is a boon to 
the seasick. There is always a great quantity of freight, 
and while it is being unloaded, passengers have an oppor- 
tunity to go ashore. It is historic ground, every inch of 
it, and one only regrets that there are not weeks instead 
of days to give to exploration. 

At the dock there is always a crowd, and many natives 
taking passage, with groups of dusky friends to bid them 
good-by. Every traveler is laden with flowers, hung from 
his neck, twisted about his hat, girt about his waist, and 
draped across his shoulders. Each man and woman is 
covered from head to foot or from breast to knee, accord- 
ing to his or her popularity. The fragrance of the carna- 
tions, the delicate scent of the ilimas and the heavy 
perfume of pomerias, with the odorous maile, hangs over 
the place like an incense-cloud. One man is a mass of 
pink carnations, another a mound of green maile. A 
native girl has mingled in happy combination the yellow 
ilima y that tells of love for royalty, with cardinal carna- 
tions. Only the man without a flower is disconsolate and 
moody. The fact that he is much cooler than those who 
stifle under a load of bloom does not at all console him. 

After the Mauna has cast off her lines, she is followed 
by the copper- colored native boys who dive for silver, 
and with this darting convoy she slips out of the bay, 
threads the buoys like a dainty maid doing a Virginia- 
reel, and then down the coast in a parallel line, past the 
alluring beach of Waikiki, past Diamond Head, with its 
striped sides full of horizontal scars, and finally out into 



HAWAII NEI 147 

the first choppy channel that divides Oahu from Molokai. 
If the natives dared these inter-island seas in their tiny 
canoes, surely we can in our stout little steamer, and, 
indeed, she is so well-balanced that she rolls scarcely at 
all, and her passengers draw a long breath of satisfaction. 
In years gone by, these inter-island boats were of the 
most democratic description. There were no separate 
cabins, and the main saloons had berths up the side, 
where the passengers slept fitfully, like an unhappy 
family. It might be the Governor of Oahu next you, 
and it might be a Chinese. Sometimes you awoke with 
a start to find yourself using the head of a Personage for 
a footstool, and sometimes the start was because the 
Personage was putting your head to a similar plebeian 
use. And always the mammoth cockroaches sported on 
the pillows — perfectly harmless, but big enough to be 
formidable. Somehow it is almost impossible to con- 
vince yourself that the Hawaiian cockroach means you 
well, however innocent his eyes or discreet his behavior. 
But those picturesque days are past. No longer does 
one take a mat on deck to escape from the fumes of the 
stifling cabin. Cabin passengers are a deal more com- 
fortable now than on some larger boats. The picturesque 
lingers only in the steerage. I made my way down there 
at night to take pictures of the crowded lower deck, and 
to see humanity sleeping with head over shoulder, like 
young and friendly dogs in a kennel, or horses in an 
open lot on a cold night. The steerage passengers 
furnish their own provisions and bedding, but they do 
not need much covering. Everybody lies down as soon 
as he comes on board. The passengers are in a row all 
around the edge of the boat, a hundred of them perhaps, 



I48 HAWAII NEI 

women and men all mixed in, but all unhappy-looking 
and quite too weary to notice anything. Their heads are 
propped on their few bundles of baggage, and they watch 
you with incurious eyes. A woman is asleep with a very 
little baby clasped close in her arms. The baby eyes 
are wide and wondering. Men step over the woman, for 
she lies, like all the others, in the only path around the 
boat, but they are careful not to step on the baby. Sev- 
eral children lie cuddled up on their mother's crumpled 
skirt, but the eyes of this woman are watching her brood 
from under the half-dropped lids. All the women are 
native, but many of the men are white and some are 
Chinese. Around the necks of the sleeping women are 
the leis, sickening sweet in their swift decay. Sometimes 
a single blanket is drawn over a half-dozen fellow- 
voyagers — people who met by chance, but who are 
willing to share with true island generosity. Far down 
the dimly lighted alleyway, which is open on the sides to 
the stars, and is merely roofed over, a deck-hand is play- 
ing a guitar and singing a hula. His eyeballs are red 
with a recent debauch, and the veins are red and swollen. 
One does not need to know Hawaiian to understand his 
song. Another sailor is dancing to his music — a man 
with no teeth and a hideous leer; but he dances well 
according to native standards, and they applaud him 
with a gurgle of sleepy laughter. A very little is quite 
enough for us. This steerage deck is dreadful when the 
rains come and the crowded place is awash and the 
natives huddle together in drenched heaps. Fortunately 
they do not mind wettings as we do. But on an August 
night this open-air sleeping is very agreeable, only one 
would like to have the undivided possession of more 



HAWAII NEI I49 

deck space and not have the guitar twanging quite so 
close. 

One soon begins to make acquaintance with other 
islands than Oahu. Molokai, like a big blue flower, 
comes up to float on the sea. At a nearer view, the blue 
petals unfold into frightful gashes in the mountain-side, 
with vast precipices and unfinished peaks between. 
Titan hands seem to have been playing at bowls, and 
there is no resemblance at all to the fabled isles of milk 
and honey. This island looks as if it would bear spears 
and blood, if anything at all, for under its sod are the 
graves of the unclean. The leper settlement, through 
whose miseries Molokai has gained an undesirable fame, 
is hidden away at the other side of the island. Presently 
the isle of Lanai comes into view, and then Maui, fertile, 
green, tender, plumed with palms, and shimmering in 
the warm air like a fickle sea-green beauty. 

Our first stop is at Lahaina, once the capital of the 
island kingdom and the second seat of government. It 
is a hot little town, built all on a half of a street, like a 
Western railway town, where the track runs on one side 
and the town on the other. Lahaina perpetually stares 
at the sea, which is busy making music on its reef. The 
beach is dazzling white, formed of pure white coral, and 
the sea is blue as the sky. There is a tremendous growth 
of tropical trees. Their shade is so dense that the 
shadows are black beneath them. A glorious banyan- 
tree makes a huge umbrella for the courthouse grounds, 
for this tiny village, laying its warm length by the sea, is 
the capital of Maui. Little country lanes, dark with 
overhanging mangoes and bananas, or candlenut and 
breadfruit trees, branch off at one side of the main street, 



I50 HAWAII XEI 

which is broad as the ocean. Little white houses snuggle 
beneath the shadows, and eyes peer out curiously at 
you, for every one does not consider it worth while to 
come ashore at Lahaina. There are several shops. One 
advertises billiards and ice-cream, and another hosiery 
and saddles. The idiosyncrasies of the signs do not im- 
press the Lahainans. They do not see anything amusing 
in having the telephone office in the barber-shop. There 
are swarms of quaint dark native children under the 
trees, and not an available carriage in the village. One 
has gone to take the village doctor to a patient at the 
other side of the island, and the horse of the other is 
laid up for repairs. 

The inhabitants dwell in sunny indolence, and it is 
only after strenuous endeavors and with much baksheesh 
that we persuade a village lad to secure us some burros. 
Lahaina is not at all mercenary'. At the far end of the 
village is a small settlement of South Sea Islanders, 
brought here no one exactly knows how, and living 
clannishly by themselves. They braid fine hats and fine 
mats for the tourist trade. Near by are the abandoned 
consulates that were here when Lahaina was a back- 
ground for court pageantry. Quite at the other end of 
the place, past an interesting ruin of a house, is the site 
of the old home of Kamehameha II. There are some 
magnificent trees there, but the house is gone. It is 
dusk by this time, and outside fires blaze like bonfires. 
We repass the weird ruin, with its grim walls and sight- 
less windows, and we can no longer see the strip of cane 
at the back of the town, stretching like a pale -green 
ribbon across the shoulder of the hillside. A whistle 
sounds — it is the signal that belated wanderers must 



HAWAII NEI 151 

return to the steamer at once, and we all scuttle for the last 
boat, our men cut through the dark waters, and we look 
like a smuggler's boat putting out to a pirate craft, except 
that I never heard that pirate crafts showed so many lights. 
We leave Lahaina twinkling under her exquisite foliage, 
basking in the few cool hours of her hot tropical day. 

At Maalaea Bay the steamer stays far out. The boats 
have a long way to row, and the company has adopted a 
novel way to guide them over the broad black waste of 
waters. The white boats are ordered to keep close 
together, and from the bridge a powerful search-light is 
kept upon them — a kindly light that makes a broad 
gleaming path for them to follow. It is a charming sight 
from the deck, the three boats rising and falling over the 
water, brought near by this shaft of light that cuts the 
darkness for them. It is like a scene in ' ' Pinafore. ' ' We 
can see the drops silvering from the oars; we see them 
land; we think they must be able to climb the ladder of 
light behind them and see us too, and we wave our hands 
impotently. Alas, to them we are merely the search- 
light's source! 

The island of Hawaii springs upon us unawares, like 
a thief in the night. Our first stop is at Kawaihae, a 
place of torture for animals, with an immense heathen 
temple crowning the heights behind! Nothing could be 
more appropriate than the cruel temple looking down on 
a scene of Caucasian cruelty that even the savage could 
not surpass. The Kanaka is merely an understudy. The 
groans and tears of helpless animals that ascend from this 
coast were never paralleled in the heiau, where prisoners 
of war died silently, as became men of their caliber. But 
to persecute animals ! Ah, that is more cruel than to slay 



152 HAWAII NEI 

a prisoner of war, who would have been your executioner 
had the victory been his. 

The tragedy begins at the water's edge. From the 
shore two horsemen dart out, one dragging an animal by 
a rope, the other driving it forward with a biting goad 
and loud cries. The steers rear and plunge, but the 
horsemen pull steadily, and the terrible din and sharp 
stings pursue from the rear. Near the shore is one of 
the steamer's large boats, manned by sturdy Hawaiians. 
The first steer is tied to the boat, his nose well up, his 
horns over the edge, and there he remains, half standing, 
half floating, half drowning, while another and another 
and another is driven in, the first steer being in the water 
half an hour before the boat is ready to move. The boat 
starts, four steers at each side, floating, struggling, half 
drowned, and wholly terrified. 

"If they would stop struggling they'd be all right," 
remarked a man with an interest in this humane cattle 
company. 

Very likely — but how should the steers know? And 
no steer, happily, passes twice through this valley of the 
shadow. As soon as the experience is gained, the ani- 
mal dies. And so they struggle and writhe and froth at 
the mouth until the water is white with foam. As the 
small boat comes near the steamer, we can see the glazed 
eyeballs rolled back in their sockets, and hear the heavy, 
stertorous breathing rattling and whistling in the gasping 
throats, and groans to send the fingers to the ears. 

There came the second act. While the animals floated 
in deep water near the ship, one of the men deftly fastened 
a band about the body, and by means of tackle, the 
steers were slowly hoisted to the deck. Sometimes the 



HAWAII NEI 153 

tackle fouled on the rail and a horn was torn out, but 
usually the trip was accomplished without accident. 
Sometimes the belt slipped, and the frightened creatures 
were lowered again into the water that it might be read- 
justed. The tackle-trip was incredibly slow. The cattle 
kicked, shivered, hung suspended in air, whirled like a 
top, revolved in the opposite direction, and finally settled 
down on deck. The deck became slimy and slippery. 
The poor beasts which had been in the water longest were 
cold and cramped and stiff, and they sprawled and slipped 
all over the deck, to the amusement of a dozen Kanakas, 
and — I'm sorry to write it — to some Americans too. 
The steers were tied in rows to the deck-rails, with about 
three inches of rope, so that they could not move their 
heads — much less alter their positions. 

But the man who made himself a lightning-rod for the 
ire of the passengers was the lord high chief twister of 
tails. This personage and his assistants were big Ka- 
nakas, with cruel mouths that laughed all the while. The 
moment a steer came within reach, long before the tackle 
was loosened, they began to twist his tail. If he ran in 
the wrong direction, his tail was twisted; if he ran in the 
right direction, he received the same treatment. The 
better a steer behaved, the worse he was treated. Virtue, 
as elsewhere in the world, had no reward at all. 

They do these things differently in London. There a 
man gets six months in jail for twisting a steer's tail. 
The pain is said to be very much the same as turning an 
arm the wrong way, and the brutal exhibition off the 
coasts of Hawaii — and Kawaihae is not the only port — 
would turn our English cousins, whom we are accustomed 
to call stolid, sick with sympathy. 



154 HAWAII NEI 

I had little heart after this for the climb to the heiau 
of Puukohola, situated on an eminence back of Kawaihae, 
and hard to reach unless you are able to secure saddle- 
horses or mules in the village. But the temple is worth 
visiting. There are no good heiaus near Honolulu, the 
best of them having been torn down, with extraordinary 
imbecility, and used for paving streets. Puukohola is 
the last of the heiaus, built on the advice of his priests, 
in 1 79 1, by Kamehameha I, in honor of the war god 
Kukailimoku. It is an irregular parallelogram, two hun- 
dred and twenty-four feet long and a hundred feet wide, 
with walls twelve feet thick at the base, and varying in 
height from eight feet on the upper side to twenty feet on 
the lower. The entrance was a narrow passage between 
two high walls, and the interior was divided into terraces 
paved with smooth, flat stones. The inner court at the 
south end, where the principal idol used to stand, may 
still be seen. The architecture reminds one of Druid 
days and Stonehenge. 

Kailua in the morning! It looks a charming place, 
with a feathery hedge of palms, and many houses clus- 
tered cozily above a cove. There is a small wharf, but 
these never come out far enough for the Mauna Loa, and 
the landing must always be made in small boats, rowed 
by the deck-hands, whose work is of the hardest and 
their pay of the smallest. At the little wharf one buys 
figs and grapes wrapped in their own leaves, and, cheer- 
fully munching, proceeds to pry out the secrets of the 
town. There are one or two general stores, where every- 
thing under the sun is sold, and where the cheerful jingle 
of the telephone-bell speaks of civilization. Fifty saddled 
burros stand in a patient row, for this is steamer-day, 



HAWAII NEI 155 

and the whole countryside has poured into the town 
to catch the thrill of healthy excitement and to have the 
blood in its sluggish veins stirred. A charming American 
doctor — or perhaps he is English or Irish' — offers to 
take me overland to the next stop, and shows me the 
town as only one of long and loving experience can show 
it. The doctor has a beautiful home on the hill, and dis- 
putes with the kahuna the patronage of a wide but 
healthy countryside. 

Just at the landing of Kailua is a black old fort that 
was the work of the great Kamehameha. It is made of 
blocks of mud and lava. Once upon a time it was 
bordered with ancient idols, hideous wooden images, 
expressly made horrible to terrify the people. When 
the tabu was broken it was here the deed was done, and 
Kamehameha II, son of the Conqueror, fond of his 
wives and enjoying their society, sat down at table with 
them. It was the first time women and men had ever 
eaten together on the island. There followed rejoicing, 
but the people waited in dread for some terrible vengeance 
to fall from heaven. Nothing happened; so they wisely 
decided that the gods were a lie and tore down the idols. 
Those about this fort were burned, but to this day it is 
called the "Place of Ghosts," and the long neck of 
black land is supposed to be the special exercise-ground 
of many spirits. Nobody goes there after nightfall for 
fear of meeting one of those dread spirits of the air. 

Kailua was the old capitol of the islands and the 
health resort of later kings. There is a fine royal resi- 
dence there, now the property of the dowager Queen 
Kapiolani. It is a big house with a wide hall and 
immense rooms. The kitchen and servants' quarters are 



I56 HAWAII NEI 

detached, and there is an open lanai a little way from the 
house where Kalakaua gave famous luaus and hulas, and 
where his celebrated red chairs were set in rows. The 
house is marked by the tabu-sticks set up at the doors, 
sticks with white balls at the top, in imitation of the old 
days when balls of white kapa at the top of the sticks 
marked the residence of the king, within which common 
people could not go on pain of death. Inside, the house 
is a marvel of polished woods. There is a table of 
satiny koa, the mahogany of the Pacific, the "royal tree," 
fit to make you weep. This table stands in the center 
of the drawing-room, and around the walls are elaborate 
carved chairs, vases, and fine pottery from China and 
Japan. There are portraits of Kalakaua, Kapiolani, and 
Liliuokalani, as well as busts of royalty. At the windows 
are exquisite lambrequins of the finest kapa I saw on the 
islands, painted in patterns, and some of it extremely old. 
The big dining-hall across the vestibule has a fine 
carved sideboard, and on it are a number of koa cala- 
bashes, polished, and marked inside with the crown and 
royal coat - of - arms, etched with a poker. These cala- 
bashes all have covers, and were designed for pink poi. 
It requires all of one's moral nerve to refrain from becom- 
ing a kleptomaniac. The water washes all day at the 
foot of the royal house of Kailua. From the upper win- 
dows is a magnificent sea- view, and I can fancy that the 
windows away from the sea are not much used by Kapio- 
lani when she comes to occupy her house, which is always 
in order. Across the street, on the land side, is the 
oldest church on the islands, lately restored, but still 
ancient-looking enough to satisfy the most exacting anti- 
quary. It is built of lava blocks, and in the foundation 



HAWAII NEI 157 

are huge stones smoothed by Umi, one of the ancient 
kings of Hawaii, and probably intended for a heathen 
heiau. The Christians took the old stones, without a 
fear, for the foundation of their faith. Inside the church 
is white and bare as a sepulcher. To it was transplanted 
all the hideous bareness of New England. It has plain, 
square, high-backed pews, a pulpit like a box, and white 
walls, with high windows of dirty white glass, uncur- 
tained, except by industrious spiders. The unstrained 
light pours through the panes. And while New England 
has been progressing, this child of hers has remained 
stationary until, if the original builders could return to 
their native land, they would wonder what wicked liberal- 
ism it was that had clothed their churches with new 
beauty, and draped the grim skeleton of their faith. But 
while the rest of the world passed on, the church at 
Kailua remained the same. One's back slowly stiffens in 
the straight-backed pews, and in a day-dream you see 
long Puritan cheeks and square Puritan jaws, with pointed 
hats and demure bonnets, and hear again anathemas 
hurled from just such a pulpit as this. The church is 
under a native pastor now, and the rigid doctrine is con- 
cealed under his soft vocalization. Vowels ripple and 
gurgle over his lips, and his shabby black garments are 
still partially paid for by American Boards. Before him 
his silent congregation drinks in his words with implicit 
faith, while the wind rattles at the fo<^-sticks just across 
the way. And if their queen should appear before them 
suddenly, the worshiping natives would every one turn a 
back on the native pastor and grovel before her in the dust, 
paying her that due which those who at the bottom of their 
hearts believe in the divine right of kings, delight to pay. 



158 



HAWAII XEI 



I had a little example of this at Kailua, Liliuokalani 
was aboard the steamer, and the natives had expected 
that she would land for a luau. The house of kings was 
open in her honor, and the feast was ready. The Annex- 
ation Commissioners from America were also there on 
that day, and it had been arranged that there should be 
a mass-meeting in the church. But the ex- Queen did 
not feel equal to landing, and, as a consequence, the 
natives did not mass. All along the little water street 
were natives with lets in their arms, but these were not 
thrown to the Commissioners. When the natives found 
that the Queen was not coming to the luau they sent the 
luau out to her. In royal calabashes, long unused, went 
the royal pink poi, and on a long wooden trencher was 
sent a roast pig. Natives ran up cocoanut- trees and 
plucked the green fruit. Other natives caught the last 
fowls they owned and tied them by the legs to present to 
the Queen. Fishermen brought the best of the catch — 
long, shining, striped uluas, still glistening with water. 
The men leaped into their canoes, rowed out to the 
steamer and clambered up the steps, literally swarming 
on the decks. Before her they passed on their knees, 
their honest faces dripping with perspiration, and happi- 
ness shining through the wet as they kissed her hands. 
Their gifts were passed to the Queen's attendants, and 
the meeting that was to have massed in the church was 
held on the shaded deck. And yet men have the hardi- 
hood to say that the natives are enamored of annexation. 

Anybody who has been in the islands, and is capable 
of an honest opinion, knows that the natives are as loyal 
to their rulers as Englishmen are; that with all their 
faults they love them still. Nothing could change their 



HAWAII NEI 159 

attitude. It is as though one criticised the Prince of 
Wales to an Englishman, if one were so bad-mannered. 
In such case, the Englishman would reply, ' ' Considering 
his temptations, he is a very good man." That is the 
spirit of Hawaiian loyalty to Hawaiian royalty. The 
only annexation natives are a few ultra-religious ones, 
who are bound to the church party and partially sup- 
ported by American money. Even there, the most prom- 
inent native pastor on the islands, and the most brilliant 
native it was my fortune to meet, was a pronounced 
royalist. 

Unless one is interested in kingly relics, there is not 
much at Kailua. To me it is the most interesting town 
on the islands, brimful of history as it is. Further down 
the Kona coast is Keauhou, where there are enough 
grass houses to fill the eye for once, and where the coco- 
palms are tall and old and beautiful. No white faces 
were there except our own, and even the post-office was 
in the open air, under a palm-tree. A mounted native 
police-officer, with riding-boots and clanking spurs, and 
the native postmaster were the only living symbols of 
law and authority. The postmaster called out the names 
and delivered the letters to the whole town clustered 
about him. The faces lightened and gleamed as the 
missives were handed to them. An old couple with their 
arms entwined received one from their boy at the Kame- 
hameha school, and an aged woman on the outskirts of 
the crowd was sorely disappointed because no letter 
came for her. 

The Keauhou people are both generous and thought- 
ful. They brought fresh lets for our tired boatmen, and 
those weary rowers seemed refreshed by the flowers. 



160 HAWAII NEI 

Near Keauhou is the tremendous toboggan-slide of the 
kings, where young chiefs used to slide from the top of 
the hill to the bottom on their papa holua, or long 
sledges. It has been a long time since a bronzed Ka- 
naka court came tearing down those tremendous slides, 
but the track on the hillside is still a visible scar. Sliding 
down hill must be eminently enjoyable when there is a 
crowd of dependents to pull the sled up again. 

Near Keauhou the lava begins, huge jagged masses, 
with the o/iza-trees as the first sentinels of vegetation. At 
places the black rivers have plunged into the sea, cooling 
in fantastic forms and remaining for all eternity a frozen 
waterfall. 

Kealakekua is the name of the steep pah' above the 
level place where Captain Cook received his just deserts, 
and where the conventional white shaft rises to his 
memory. The cliff above is honeycombed with burial- 
caves, and it is a place where ghosts do walk. Every- 
body lands at Kealakekua, as a matter of sentiment, 
though the town on the other side of the bay (Napoopoo) 
is much more interesting. Napoopoo is a charming 
brown little hamlet, very warm and fragrant, with grass 
houses, and roads that are but lanes, where great trees 
meet overhead and mangoes and tamarinds vie to keep 
the sun from your head. I walked about a quarter of a 
mile, through fallen leaves two feet deep to stand in the 
ancient heiau where Captain Cook was worshiped as the 
god Lo?w y and which has many times been stained with 
human blood. The hciau of Hiki Au was never a very 
large one, and its terraces are now but piles of weather- 
beaten stones. I prowled through the ruins, building 
for myself the barbaric altar where human sacrifices were 



HAWAII NEI l6l 

offered up to the many gods of the Polynesian pantheon. 
Some of the stones were stained darkly, and I fancied 
that the black stains were blood. I looked at them and 
touched them with my finger until the gruesome imagin- 
ings of the place overcame me, and I fled along the 
beach, as superstitious as any Kanaka, and hearing again 
Kipling's haunting lines: 

" Comes a breathing hard behind thee — snuffle-snuffle through 

the night — 
It is Fear, O little hunter, it is Fear." 

And it was fear. The person who could not conjure 
the ghosts of dead warriors in the tumbled corridors and 
trampled terraces of that blood-stained temple would be 
without imagination. Such a background for a ghost- 
Story was never conceived by a dreamer. 

We bought cocoanuts and drank the sweetish water 
that is called milk by courtesy, and we scooped out the 
rich meat of soft young coacoanuts with spoons. There 
is a great coffee region above this narrow rim of coast, 
and supplies for the plantations were being handled. 
Between Napoopoo and the next stop is an old city of 
refuge, Honaunau, once the shelter-place of all this side 
of the island. All roads led to Honaunau and criminals 
fled there from all over the lee of Hawaii. The cities of 
refuge were exactly the same as those of Hebrew Scripture, 
but were founded by the Hawaiians long before they had 
ever heard of the Jews. From this circumstance, and 
others, historians with plenty of time and imagination, 
have argued that the Hawaiians are the lost Israelitish 
tribe, though if history could be trusted it would seem 
that all the twelve tribes were lost, they have reappeared 
in so many places. The city of refuge was the Hawaiian 



1 62 HAWAII NEI 

idea of equity — a place where justice stepped in to soften 
the harshness of law. It was a walled city, and the walls 
are yet standing. Around the boundaries were idols, and 
any man, no matter what his crime, who came within the 
shadow of those walls was safe. This was absolutely 
necessary; for the Hawaiian law prescribed death for 
many things, and worst of all was the tabu. A man 
might violate tabu accidentally and unconsciously, but 
the penalty was the same. For such there was nothing 
but the city of refuge. After a certain residence within 
its limits, his crime was purged and he was free to go 
abroad again. In war times, women and children of both 
parties often flocked to Honaunau, and to their credit be 
it said that no Hawaiian king or priest ever violated the 
sanctity of those walls. On the windward side of the 
island was another of these cities, and history says that 
they were always populous. 

Hookena's landing juts out into the water, and is 
always crowded with a throng of dark-faced, pure-blooded 
natives. Ancient cocoanut -groves bend against a hill, 
where the entrances to the burial-caves may be plainly 
seen. There is a legend that one of the skeletons is 
wrapped in a cloak of canary-feathers, and it requires 
strength of mind to turn steamerwards and not lose one- 
self seeking treasure-trove in that fascinating spot. They 
point out to you Nohoneakauhi, where an ancient chief 
of the island, an ardent shark-hunter, made his enemies 
into hash and fed them to the sharks. The choice bait 
brought sharks in numbers, and the royal hunter had 
great sport spearing them. Sometimes he did not wait 
for people to die, but chopped them anyway and fed 
them to his prey. The big wooden platters on which the 



HAWAII NEI 163 

sharks' feast was spread were preserved for years in the 
island, but are now in the Bishop Museum. If you do 
not believe the story, go look at the platters. 

By the time we reach Hoopuloa it is growing dusk. A 
solitary white man goes over the side, bidding us a sad 
good-by. He is a school-teacher, and the only white in 
the place. He tells me that he has not a relative in the 
world, that he must walk two miles in the thick darkness 
before he reaches his home, and that in his cabin a soli- 
tary and faithful dog watches for his coming. We pass 
the night off the lee shore, so close that you can almost 
see the spray on the beach, for one of the delights of this 
leeward trip is that the steamer hugs the beach so close 
that the trees, the towns, and all the landscape are like 
your own front dooryard. And in the morning there is 
a tempestuous passage around Kalae Point, a four-o'clock 
landing at Honuapo or a five-o'clock one at Punaluu, 
which is the end of the line, and the journey down Ha- 
waii's lee — one of the most interesting and delightful sea 
trips in the world — is done. 

At Honuapo friends were waiting for me with fresh 
horses and a good road, and a big, wide plantation-house 
at the end. And there were days of pleasure in a native 
village, and finally the trip to the volcano up the Kau side 
of the mountain. I chose this way, though it is none of 
the easiest, for the sake of going up one way and down 
the other. We had a little ride by rail in sugar-cars, then 
a private conveyance, and then the long ride of over 
thirty miles, over a good road, to the volcano. The ride 
is worth while, if for nothing but the study of lava. Some 
of the flows are dated, but most of them were before the 
memory of man. There are vast tracts of pahoehoe, the 



164 



HAWAII NEI 



smooth lava that has overflowed the land like an ocean 
of molasses, and has dried in huge veils and mantles of 
gray, shining stuff that looks like asphaltum. It lies in 
ripples, in coils, in waves, as though a chill wind had 
passed over it and it had frozen forever. It is in pools, 
smooth and quiet, with caverns that are really burst 
bubbles. It has a slightly rough surface, and horses go 
over it, though it is slippery as ice wherever the surface 
is smooth. The lava that is called aa is, on the contrary, 
utterly impassable. It is jagged and rough, formed into 
small mountains, interspersed with bowlders, and generally 
more wicked in appearance than the pahoehoe. The land- 
scape up this tremendously torn and seared side of Mauna 
Loa is made up of these two elements. There are trees, 
and occasionally a fleeting glimpse of a mongoose, with 
which this country is infested, the first " rikki-tikki-tavi " 
having been introduced to exterminate the rate that 
gnawed the cane. The mongoose did its work thor- 
oughly, and when it had finished with the rats it began 
on the chickens, until now there is not a fowl on this 
part of Hawaii, except carefully cherished ones nursed 
in coops and kept as household pets on the front lawn. 
There is a half-way house, where a lone hermit prepares 
meals, being warned by telephone of your approach. He 
is not a clean hermit, and he has pet chickens and turkeys 
in the dining-room; but you are so famished for food, 
after your early start, that by the time you reach his 
lonely lodge nothing matters. A hamper on the way is 
not a bad thing, and there should be plenty of drink- 
ables, as there is no water on this side of the mountain. 
Kau means dry, and it is well named. Ever above 
you stretches the long blue slope of Mauna Loa (long 



HAWAII NEI 165 

mountain) — an ascent so gradual that the summit is not 
easy to distinguish. It is a popular fallacy that Kilauea 
is a summit by itself, when it is but an open wound in 
the flank of Mauna Loa. 

And now for the first time you begin to realize Ha- 
waii's birth in fire. It is the newest island of them all, 
very likely not finished yet. It is actually being built up 
at the present time, and these terrific excrescences of 
pahoehoe are not vindictive eruptions bringing ruin to fer- 
tile regions, but furnished the materials for the architecture 
of the island. Rock on rock, terrace on terrace, peak on 
peak, the island has lifted itself from the sea. It is nearly 
the height of Mont Blanc now, and forces not yet dead 
are capable of adding still another story to these already 
towering peaks. There are plenty of people on Hawaii 
who will tell you about the days when the lava streams, 
glowing a dull red, flowed sluggishly down the mountain- 
side, to plunge hissing into the sea. The noise of the 
steam could be heard for miles, and the red mass, now 
black as a coal, remains as a monument. It is terribly 
hot on this ride, so hot that the arms burn through cotton 
sleeves, and an umbrella is a comfort. Often there is a 
sudden shower, which cools the air, but the sun is steady 
and insistent, and you will remember its steady shining 
for many a day. 

At last a faint blue cloud appears ahead, and sulphur- 
smoke comes out through cracks in the ground. The 
sun is not yet down, but it grows chilly, and all over the 
face of the land smoke and steam congeal in clouds. You 
are nearing the land of fire — a terra del fuego on a hill- 
top. A road branches ofTto a mountain farm, the source 
of supplies for the Volcano House, a place where "pig," 



1 66 HAWAII NEI 

as the Hawaiians still designate pork, fresh beef, and vege- 
tables are grown for the hotel, and where a huge oven 
shows where the farmer bakes the root of the tree-fern to 
feed to his hogs. It is said that long years ago the pro- 
prietor of this mountain farm was very poor, and for a 
long while kept off starvation by eating baked fern-roots 
himself. The story was told in my presence to a lady of 
many ailments who was staying at the Volcano House. 

1 ' What was his complaint ? ' ' asked the lady, to whom 
the whole world is but a collection of aches and pains. 

"Poverty," was the laconic reply. 

The Volcano House, perched on the rim of the big 
crater, is a welcome sight, but the i?i/erno in front of it, 
filled with a gray-black ocean of lava and covered with a 
cloud of steam, still bears the Plutonic trademark too 
strongly to be agreeable. For one unused to volcanoes, 
it seems an unsafe place to spend a night. What if the 
house should totter over the brink in one of those earth- 
quake tremors which so frequently occur? But it never 
has, and within is a huge, crackling fire, in a pleasant 
room, where the bare rafters are garlanded with green, 
and the hair of the tree-fern forms a frostlike drapery 
over everything. There is a faithful Chinese servitor, who 
is everything from valet de chambre to caterer, and the 
dinner is hot and savory and the beds soft, even if they 
are cold. And you are very glad to view the crater by 
moonlight at long range, and not venture over its track- 
less waste until the next morning. 

Early in the dawn horses are brought saddled to the 
door by a guide, for no one crosses the crater alone, 
though the volcano itself has not been active for several 
months. The horses crawl gingerly down the precipice, by 



HAWAII NEI 167 

a zigzag path, where ferns, wet with dew, sprinkle your 
face and scatter a shower of drops over you. There are 
pretty pink and white 0^/0-berries, which taste like a 
huckleberry, and are said to grow nowhere else on the 
islands. How odd that these waxen berries should be 
confined to this tremendous barren place, where the fire- 
god has played from time immemorial! There are other 
berries, not edible, of a beautiful shade of turquoise blue. 
The pink and blue berries form a charming combination, 
backed as they are with ferns of living green, their young 
fronds a bright red. There are gleaming silver swords, 
too, like ice-plants, all glistening in the sunrise. It is a 
strange new world into which you go down. You look 
back longingly at these unknown plants, with which 
Nature has covered the ruin she has wrought; for it is a 
strange feeling to be leaving the familiar earth behind. 
Huge fissures, riven by earthquakes, are crossed by means 
of little bridges, and the black plain, which looked level 
from above, is in reality jammed like an ice-pack, where 
the lava of past centuries has striven for place with later 
flows. A blue river beyond is pointed out as the newest 
flow of lava, the ashy mass looking like a multitude of 
coiled hawsers. Every little while a beehive of lava 
shows where a blow-hole made itself into a cone, like a 
bubble on top of boiling jelly. Much of the lava is so 
hot that you cannot touch it, and if you fall and attempt 
to save yourself by clutching, it cuts like glass and makes 
an end of your gloves or your hands. A match lights 
almost anywhere, and if you are caught in one of the 
passing showers, as you always are, you may dry your 
clothes and warm your feet in the sulphur steam rising 
from any of these cracks. Presently the horses are left 



1 68 HAWAII NEI 

in a paddock of lava, where there is a little cistern of rain- 
water, and the rest of the journey is made over a good 
path beaten out on the solid lava. Vegetation has ceased 
long since. Far behind, a lone fern is the last sign of 
vegetation on the lava- crust, and if you have brought 
gifts for Pele, in accordance with immemorial custom, you 
must have brought them from the crater's brink. 

A faint pillar of smoke points to Halemaumau, which, 
by the way, does not mean " house of everlasting fire" 
at all, in spite of some thousands of statements to that 
effect. It means "house of ferns," and was probably so 
called because of Pele's caprice in building a house of 
lava and then tearing it down, just as bowers of ferns 
were built and torn up in a short while. ' ' House of ever- 
lasting fire" is much more interesting, but it does not 
happen to be true. We are at the brink now, looking 
down into the pit, some fifteen hundred feet deep, for the 
fires have sunk out of sight and carried the bottom of the 
pit with them. This is where some captious people affect 
to be disappointed. As well be disappointed at coming on 
an Indian camp with the wigwams still standing and the 
fires not yet out! Smoke comes from the deepest part 
of the pit, and no man has ever been in this hole, in spite 
of tales to the contrary. At any moment a jet of fire 
may tell that Pele is at home again. My offering was a 
pair of white gloves, which Pele would have to mend and 
clean before they would be wearable. My gift was inten- 
tional, as was not that of a very good Hawaiian hat from 
the head of a young man, who made a frantic grab as the 
jaunty headgear floated away. He came near being the 
first man ever in Halemaumau. The guide is careful, for 
the edges of the pit look quite safe, but are not. There 



HAWAII NEI 169 

have been disastrous landslides, and fissures show where 
another piece of earth is ready to slide into the smoking 
pit. No one has ever been killed here, and the white 
cross on the hillside marks the spot where a gentleman 
with heart disease expired from over-exertion. 

We throw stones into the cavern, hover on its brink, 
laugh to cover our awe, and do all the things that mere 
humans do to hide their embarrassment in the presence of 
the infinite. I should like to have seen Kilauea in erup- 
tion; but I can imagine nothing grander than sunrise on 
this sea of black and gray — then a peep into the center 
of the earth — with everything familiar and small and 
commonplace left behind. 

There are other things to do at the Volcano House. 
Kilauea is pitted with craters, and there are at least a 
half-dozen that most people never see — side outlets equally 
as interesting but not as grand as the main crater. There 
is Kilauea iki, perfectly round, like a bowl with mush at 
the bottom. Another crater has a historic point where 
a Hawaiian lover leaped to his death. This is not one of 
the mythical lover's leaps or devil's slides, but a real one. 
It all happened not so long ago, in the days when Ha- 
waiians were bound to work for other Hawaiians, and 
there were cruelties and abuses in the land. This par- 
ticular serf begged to be allowed to visit the woman he 
loved, but his master would not grant him the desired 
leave. So the serf stole away in the night, and when 
they missed him, they went at once to the home of 
the woman at the other side of the island, and there 
found him. They brought him back, and he knew 
well what whippings and cruelties awaited him. When 
they reached the crater he broke away and threw 



I70 HAWAII NEI 

himself over the brink. So it was a real lover's leap, 
after all. 

At the side of the Volcano House is a sulphur clift 
where free sulphur shines yellow in the sun. In front of 
it are many little small-pox pits in the earth, their sides 
covered with flakes of sulphur and hot smoke pouring 
from their yellow throats. Their vapors are so suffocating 
that you cannot stand with the wind blowing toward you. 
There are sulphur vapor baths in the Volcano House, 
where you sit and steam in Nature's own bath, and, if it 
is not hot enough to suit you, you may register your 
complaint with Madam Pele. 

Up behind the hotel is the most magnificent fern forest 
in all Hawaii. Follow the road for a couple of miles, and 
do not get discouraged, and you will come to a place 
where the giant fronds meet over your head and where it 
is always a cool green twilight. The tree-ferns are 
wrapped with a golden brown fiber, soft as silk, and the 
wreck of their huge bodies makes the earth knee-deep in 
mold. They seem almost laughing at you — twenty, 
twenty-five feet, thirty feet the huge ferns reach — as 
you sit on a giant stump and think what a pigmy you 
are, while the great leaves rustle in tree-talk over your 
head. It is a good antidote for vanity. 

There is something positively frightful about these 
mammoth ferns. They carry you back to the days when 
the whole new world was covered with gigantic fronds, 
and at every gust of wind which sends a huge fern crash- 
ing somewhere in the depths of the forest, you start and 
expect to hear the footfall of a mastodon breaking his 
way through the uncanny growth. The o/ie/o-berries 
grow thick at your feet, but you are too absorbed to eat 



HAWAII NEI 171 

them. In the forest, on the edge of the afternoon, no 
human being will disturb you, no thing of the world come 
near you, and, when you descend from that shadowy, 
ferny fastness, you will feel as one who has seen the 
burning bush or read the law on tables of stone in a far 
mountain. 



172 HAWAII NEI 



CHAPTER XIV 

WINDWARD HAWAII 

Hawaii to windward and Hawaii to leeward are as 
Phyllis to-day and Phyllis to-morrow. You may know 
all about the one and nothing at all of the other. They 
are the comic and tragic masks of the same face. 

Each island is divided by a backbone of mountain 
ridge, and the country, the climate, and the products are 
as different on the two sides as though the regions were 
separated by a thousand leagues of sea. It seems like a 
paradox to say that the windward side is cooler, yet much 
more tropical than the lee side, but it is true, and all 
caused by the wonderfully persuasive action of the magic 
rain. The windward side is wet, windy, and tropical, 
while the leeward side is dry and hot. The high moun- 
tains catch the rain-clouds, and prevent them from going 
over to the lee. Only a few showers succeed in passing 
the dead-line, while on the windward side it is a constant 
deluge. It has been known to rain thirty-six inches in 
Molokai in thirty-six hours, and in hot little, moist little, 
damp little Hilo they measure their rainfall in yards and 
feet. Nine feet for a season is nothing remarkable, and 
fifty inches in January is almost a drouth. It is no 
wonder that waterfalls hang like bridal- veils over every 
rock, or that clear little streams come purling down every 
declivity in the land. It rains every day, and the dark 




Pharaoh's Daughters and A Hawaiian Moses. 



HAWAII NEI 173 

clouds hang over Mauna Loa almost constantly, and yet 
housewives tell you that the air is much drier during a 
shower than at any other time, and that is the time they 
select for hanging their clothes out to dry. 

The road from the Volcano House to Hilo is a marvel. 
Though more lava poured down this side of the moun- 
tain than down the other, there is scarcely a lava block or 
stream to be seen. The tremendous downpour of rain 
and the everlasting patter of stinging drops has disin- 
tegrated the lava, and a thousand ferns grow where not 
one grew before. The whole region is green. Giant 
ferns border the road for thirty miles between the vol- 
cano and Hilo. They are infinitely various, and botanists 
from all over the world come here to track the new and 
unnamed specimen to his lair. When they get lost, as 
wanderers often do in the fern forests, they climb a tree 
and take their bearings over the billowy green tops of 
these wondrous ferns. Here again civilization is the foe 
of beauty. After the fork of the road where the path 
turns off to the crater of Kilauea iki, come the cabins — 
villas by courtesy — of those who like to spend part of 
the year in the cool, bracing air of the heights. Some 
of these houses are not bad-looking, but the clearing they 
necessitated was fatal to the beauty of the road. The 
fern thicket had to be removed, if one would live in a 
domicile more substantial than an anchored balloon; and 
so, in patches down this wonderful road, the ground has 
been scorched and seared as though a reaper had gone 
over it, and on bare, brown spots, cheap houses have gone 
up. Sometimes a border of tree-ferns has been left at 
either side of the driveway, but these are shorn of their 
fronds half-way up, and look like plucked ostriches. All 



174 



HAWAII NEI 



the deep mold, all the beautiful fallen ferns clinging to the 
brown silk stalks are cleared away. The gardens of 
these mountain villas are like plague spots on the road, 
scars in the smooth flank of some beautiful animal. 
And as the stage-coach rumbles down, stopping at 
almost every house to take some garden-truck, or a few 
letters, or an interminable list of orders for Hilo mer- 
chants, one wonders if there is a natural law that condemns 
everything useful to be ugly. 

It is a huge Concord stage which binds Hilo to the 
volcano far above — a coach with a big boot, always full 
of baggage, and always covered with tarpaulins, since 
this journey was never made without showers at some 
point. There are few glimpses of lava. The ground is 
covered with green and leafy mold for a depth of perhaps 
six feet, perhaps sixty. The vines are so thick that foot- 
passengers walk over little streams on natural bridges, 
which easily support the weight of the body. Far below, 
the flowing water murmurs, but the carpet of green is so 
thick that there is not a sight of the stream. The whole 
region bubbles with brooks. Turn back this thick mantle 
of green in which the earth has wrapped herself and you 
will find masses of lava and savage bowlders — the tre- 
mendous implements with which the Architect of the 
universe worked. 

It is small wonder that where the fern forest has been 
cleared coffee plantations thrive, and the spreading bushes 
with glossy green leaves and flowers like snow, or berries 
like cranberries, grow as weeds grow. The whole legion 
has the look of prosperity. Seeing these trees, one is 
almost inclined to believe the brilliant prospectuses; but 
having no desire to mislead, I am forced to say that talks 



HAWAII NEI 175 

with a dozen planters from a dozen different Hawaiian 
neighborhoods show that the culture is still an experi- 
ment, and that no one knows yet whether it will fail or 
succeed. A number of "if's" must be solved before 
coftee-planting will be safe. 

There is a luncheon spread on the wide lanai of the 
Half-way House at Olaa, and then a long spin down the 
road to Hilo. The grade is so good and so gradual that 
bicycles make the trip up from Hilo, and the road down 
is one long slide. Native houses become more frequent, 
but not one of grass. Telephone wires are in evidence 
now. Between the wires huge spiders have woven webs in 
which the constant showers leave many drops to hang like 
jewels. The whole web is outlined in sparkling wet, and 
in the center spiders big as filberts sit and wait for prey. 

The forest is dense to the very edge of Hilo town — the 
wonderful green drapery that nature has thrown over 
this throbbing, restless, melting, discontented mountain 
of Mauna Loa. There are magnificent &?<z-trees, fine 
specimens of a tree that is becoming all too rare. Morn- 
ing-glories twice as large as any of those cultivated in 
American gardens climb to the tops of forest giants and 
stretch out their delicate cups of white and mauve and 
blue. Many of the trees are almost strangled with 
creepers, and far up their trunks and branches the ie 
flings its scarlet crown. There are trees that have sur- 
rendered their own lives to a conquering army of vigorous 
parasites that have clothed the dead trunks with beauty. 
Tall ohias are full of bird's-nest fern, mammoth maiden- 
hair, five-finger fern that could only have belonged to a 
giant's hand, since each frond is four feet long, and many 
rare, furry things catalogued only in botanical books. 



I76 HAWAII NEI 

Hilo is a straggling village, and the approach to it is 
through delightful country lanes, like the beautiful oleander- 
bordered ones of Tahili, in Oahu. The houses are wide- 
eaved and hospitable-looking, the gardens big and crowded 
with bloom, the grass green and lush. It looks old, 
and it looks like New England. A big blue stone church, 
which belongs to the foreigner, is the only modern thing. 
A still bigger white church on the hill, with a square tower 
and a sweet-toned bell, is the native church — the famous 
Haile Church. There is a good hotel, with clustering 
cottages and a sloping sward, and down the incline to the 
exquisite bay run the little streets that are devoted to 
business. 

And by the time you have seen this, the whole town is 
blotted out behind a thick gray curtain of rain, and Hilo 
is paying the penalty of her fertility. It pours and pours, 
but no one pays the slightest attention. Housewives 
hang out the washing, girls come down the hill on bicycles, 
the mud spurting in streams from their tires, and their 
white duck skirts in some mysterious way kept unsullied. 
No wheel except a Hilo wheel could keep itself upright 
in such mud. 

The bay is the most beautiful harbor in all Hawaii. 
As elsewhere, there is no wharf, and landings to and from 
the little steamers must be made in small boats. Around 
the bay is a bold headland crowned with green, and the 
water of the bay is an exceedingly clear and limpid 
emerald. 

Hilo has a number of show places. Cocoanut Island 
is one of the landmarks of the harbor, a slender spit of 
land jutting into the water and crowned with a grove of 
cocoanuts, hoary with age. There are delicious coves — 



HAWAII NEI 177 

coves where the water is a paler green, and where bathers 
come to have the novel experience of bathing in warm 
salt water while taking a cold shower in rain water from 
above, for it always rains in the bathing-pool. 

An island Charon ferries you across to Cocoanut Isle, 
and assures you that there are "not very many sharks" 
as he grates the prow of his boat against a rock. You 
bathe in the cocoanut cove, but with some misgivings, 
for a melancholy row of sharks' skulls with quadruple 
rows of indented teeth attest to the fact that there have 
been sharks at no remote period. The drive to and from 
Cocoanut Isle is delightful, across the wide Wailuku 
River, through lanes bordered with delicious wild straw- 
berry guavas, which the natives do not even take the 
trouble to gather. 

On the other side of the town are the Rainbow Falls, 
within easy riding or walking distance. As a walk it is 
very charming. The road is lumpy and invariably muddy, 
and almost impassable for wheeled vehicles, but fine for a 
short skirt and stout shoes. There are rippling little 
streams to cross on foot-bridges where it is pleasant to 
sit and dangle your feet and eat pineapples from the 
neighboring field. Behind the hospital, down a steep 
little ravine, is a spring that gushes pure and cold from 
the mountain. This is one of the finest, because it is the 
coldest, in all Hawaii. It was for centuries a tabu spring, 
sacred to the use of the high chief of this district. No 
common man was allowed to slake his thirst there. If 
one ever did, it was in the dead of night and at the peril 
of his life, for the tabu sticks of white kapa guarded the 
place day and night. 

The road winds ever further up the valley. A short 



178 HAWAII NEI 

detour brings you to the famous lava flow of 188 1, which 
threatened to demolish Hilo and had the whole town in 
an uproar. Princesses and princes, chiefs and chiefesses, 
Queen Kapiolani herself, tried to stop the flood, but it 
crept steadily toward Hilo. At last the Princess Ruth 
Keelikolani, governess of Hawaii, sister of the fourth and 
fifth Kamehamehas, a mountainous woman, whose fat 
flowed, or rather overflowed, in waves, tried her hand at 
it. There is some dispute as to what she did, but a black 
pig, the sort that used to be sacrificed in the heiaus, and 
a red silk handkerchief, were thrown into the advancing 
lava and the flow stopped. Its glistening front still stands 
like a wall of crystallized fire around Hilo. 

"A remarkable coincidence," explained the relieved 
whites, whose property had been saved, as soon as they 
could get their breath. 

1 ' Pele ! ' ' gasped the natives, who had nothing to lose, 
falling on their faces. 

It was irreverently suggested by the whites, whose 
alarm quickly faded into incredulity as soon as the danger 
was removed, that perhaps the lava flow became discour- 
aged at sight of the princess. Some idea of her supera- 
bundant plumpness may be gained from the fact that she 
could not walk up to the stream, and so was carried in a 
sort of palanquin specially gotten up for the occasion and 
borne by about twelve men, who were relieved at inter- 
vals by other stout fellows. Fortunately lava travels 
slowly, or the stream would have beaten the princess. 

At the fork of the road is a charming grass house. It 
was once a chiefs dwelling, built in the detached style 
compelled by the tabu, where the women and men were 
necessarily segregated. This was quite a palace, a hun- 



HAWAII NEI I79 

dred feet long, perhaps, and standing in an elbow of the 
hills. It has fallen on evil days now. The Japanese have 
ingrafted upon it a thatched architecture of their own, 
and have bound in sticks and staves and all sorts of things 
to fill up the cracks in the grass walls Near by a 
Portuguese woman bends over a rapid stream, washing, 
and her small daughters, their skirts tucked up and their 
hair done into pugs above their preternaturally old faces, 
bend with her over the stones that are their washing- 
boards. A few feet ahead of them the stream plunges 
twenty feet in a fine waterfall, but the scenic beauty of the 
place is lost on them. 

If there were serpents in Hawaii, this place would be 
unbearable, for there is a short cut through deep, lush 
grass. But happily the snake has not yet found his way 
to this Eden. The way lies up the Wailuku River, con- 
cerning which, and this very fall, is told the pretty mytho- 
logical tale of the maiden imprisoned in the fall by a cruel 
dragon. The maid's demigod lover — such conveniences 
were common in old Hawaii — changed the course of the 
river and released her; but when the sun is right you may 
still see her, or the rainbow garment which she wears, 
behind the fall. 

The fall is beautiful enough to be excuse for any story. 
It is in basaltic formation, and you come on it suddenly 
up the old bed of the river whose unaccountable change 
made the foundation for the tale. There is a goodly 
stream forever pouring into the basin and hollowing out 
a deep, cold pool for itself. The fall is, perhaps, fifty 
feet high, and its stone confines are lined with ferns and 
moss. Before nine o'clock the most delicious rainbows 
play through its spray, but at other hours it is hard to 



l8o HAWAII NEI 

catch them. Usually there is a passing shower to make 
the rocks slippery, but it is delightful to sit opposite the 
fall and study the changes in prismatic coloring. 

Further up the same river is another formation, even 
more peculiar, called the Boiling Pots. This is another 
prank of basalt blocks, the water having sought an under- 
ground channel and found it. In several places the water 
boils and foams up from below, and presents exactly the 
appearance of boiling water in a receptacle. The Boiling 
Pots are some seven miles from Hilo, but it is a fine 
walk on a shady day. 

Coming down from these water-shrines we were caught 
in a brisk shower — one of those where it rains an inch 
an hour. We took refuge under a spreading mango-tree 
which grew in the garden of a native house, and a number 
of interesting native children came to keep us company. 
It used to be the fashion in Hawaii to adopt and bring 
up the children of others. Babies were the common 
medium of exchange — a sort of legal tender. In the 
families of chiefs, the custom was fostered because it 
cemented friendship. It was in vogue up to two gen- 
erations ago, but now the Hawaiians are as fond of their 
children as other people are, and adoption is no longer 
the fashion. 

The children, like all Hawaiians, were melodious- 
minded, and they sang for us simple songs of the fields 
and the winds and the flowers, songs that would make 
good kindergarten roundelays. But it began to be wet 
under the mango-tree, so we took shelter in the cleanly 
house of a Portuguese across the street. It is amazing 
to see the improvement that education has wrought in 
this transplanted people. When they first came from 



HAWAII NEI 151 

the Azores they were thievish, untrustworthy, and great 
prevaricators. But their children have been obliged to 
attend school, and the second generation is a great im- 
provement on its predecessor. The children are cleanly, 
they have learned the distinction between mine and thine, 
and they are industrious. One of their best features is 
the desire to beautify their homes. You can always tell 
a Portuguese house by the green things that grow round 
it. When we begged leave to sit on this little porch, 
the daughter of the house brought out two chairs for our 
comfort, and we had a glimpse of a speckless interior, 
into which we were hospitably invited. But we preferred 
the outside and the sweet breath of the wet earth. In 
the little garden were the inevitable grape-vine and fig- 
tree, a fine papaya, an alligator-pear loaded with rich 
fruit, a mango, and several varieties of red-leaved taro, 
grown as foliage plants. Honeysuckle and jasmine clam- 
bered over the house. 

At last the gray rain-clouds ceased to roll in from the 
water, and we could go home. Each tree still flung a 
shower of drops on every lingering breeze. Under the 
mango-tree the native children still sang, and every glossy 
tropical leaf had a new coat of varnish. This is the 
deathless beauty of this dustless land. 

The home-going from Hilo to Honolulu by way of 
Windward Hawaii is a beautiful one. Here is no low- 
lying lava coast, but a clear profile of bold bluffs, with 
fringes of waterfalls dashing themselves to death in the 
sea below. Every river pours over the bluff, until the 
coast is a succession of watered ribbons. Occasionally a 
village is in view, but usually a spire and a cluster of 
roofs atop the bluffs is all that is visible. Landing is 



1 82 HAWAII NEI 

difficult and dangerous. The ocean beats in surges 
against this cliff, and it is not at all like the quiet lee side. 
This is excitement. One climbs over the edge of the 
steamer, rocking in the swell, clambers down steps more 
than perpendicular, waits for a propitious moment, and 
then leaps into a row-boat. The row-boat goes as near 
the coast as it dares, and the passengers are raised and 
lowered to and from the cliff by means of a box, called a 
basket, at the end of a long crane. It is not a safe 
method, and sometimes, in bad weather, even this is 
impossible. The daughter of Minister Stevens was killed 
at one of these landings, and since then passengers have 
sometimes been compelled to travel overland all the way 
from Hilo, the steamers refusing to take the chances. 

Windward Hawaii is not as rich in historical associa- 
tions as the famous lee coast, though there are some 
remarkable heiaus and some famous battle-grounds. As 
a picture it is infinitely more lovely. There are deep 
valleys where the sun only penetrates five days in the 
year, and where the hot moist air is tremendously oppres- 
sive. Valley after valley, mere rents in the hills, lined 
with green, stretch along the coast. Steep palis guard 
them, and a horse must be sure-footed and a rider without 
fear to make the descent into them and the climb up the 
other side. At the bottom of every gorge is a deep, 
swift river. There is no coast line in all the world quite 
like it — this new western coast of greater America. 




Modern Hula Dancers. 



HAWAII NEI 183 



CHAPTER XV 

LEGENDS AND FOLK-LORE 

Hawaii's folk-lore is exceedingly rich. Many of the 
ancient legends and traditions are suggestive of the 
Greek, and others of the Hebrew. Their tale of the 
creation is Hebraic, or, at least, springs from the same 
source as the Hebrew legend. From the beginning, 
according to the sagas, existed a Hawaiian trinity — Kane, 
the originator, Ku, the builder, and Lono, director of 
the elements. By the united will of these, light was 
brought into chaos. The three created the heavens, the 
earth, and the sun, moon, and stars. When man was 
created, his body was formed of red earth, mingled with 
the spittle of Kane, and the head was formed of whitish 
clay, brought by Lono from the four corners of the earth. 
According to some derivations, the meaning of Adam is 
red, and the Hawaiian Adam was of that color. He was 
made in Kane's image, and Kane breathed into his 
nostrils and he became alive. A woman was fashioned 
from one of his ribs, taken from his side while he slept. 
The pair was placed in a beautiful paradise, through 
which flowed three rivers of "the waters of life," on the 
banks of which grew every sort of fruit, including the 
tabu breadfruit-tree. Among the angels who had been 
created was Kanaloa, the Hawaiian Lucifer, who was a 
disturbing element in Heaven. Having failed to create 



184 HAWAII NEI 

a man of his own, he decided to destroy the handiwork 
of Kane, and so entered the primitive paradise in the 
form of a moo, or lizard, and tempted the simple pair to 
commit some crime for which they were banished from 
Eden by the ' ' large white bird of Kane. ' ' The Hawaiian 
Adam had three sons, the second of whom was slain by 
the first. Thirteen generations follow for the Biblical 
ten, when occurred the Hawaiian deluge. The Hawaiian 
Noah was called Nuu, and there is the tale of the ark and 
the wife and sons, and the pairs of every living thing. 
When the floods were over, the gods entered the ark and 
commanded Nuu to go forth. In gratitude he offered a 
sacrifice to the moon, mistaking it for Kane. Descend- 
ing on a rainbow, Kane rebuked his thoughtlessness, but 
left the bow as his perpetual token of forgiveness. There 
passed ten generations between Nuu and Ku Pula, who 
removed to a " southern country," taking with him as a 
wife his slave woman, Ahu. Ku Pula established the 
rite of circumcision, and had twelve great-grandsons, who 
became the founders of twelve tribes, from one of which 
the Hawaiians are descended. There is a story of Joseph 
and the Exodus, but it is not so well authenticated, and 
is probably a tale gotten from contact with some other 
people; but the genealogical line from the Hawaiian Adam 
to the Hawaiian Jacob has been brought down through 
three distinct historical channels, whose agreement is 
wonderful. The one brought to the islands in the 
eleventh century by the high priest Paao, and retained 
by his successors, is regarded as most authentic. 

With the Exodus and the settlement of the Menehune 
people in the land set apart for them by Kane, the 
Hawaiian legends cease to be Hebraic. How did the 



HAWAII NEI 185 

Hawaiian priesthood become possessed of the stories 
of the Hebrew genesis ? It was old to them when 
the Resolution and the Discovery dropped anchor in 
Kealakakua Bay, old to them when one or more chance 
parties of Spanish sailors may have dropped in upon 
them on their way to the Spice Islands, and, probably, 
old to them when the Hawaiians found their present 
home, in the sixth century, and when the Polynesians 
left the coast of Asia, four centuries earlier. One theory 
is that the story was acquired through Israelitish contact 
with the ancestors of the Polynesians while they were 
drifting eastward from the land of their nativity. A more 
probable assumption, think the investigators, is that the 
Hawaiian theogony, so strangely perpetuated, is an inde- 
pendent and perhaps original version of a series of Crea- 
tion legends once common to the Cushite, Semitic, and 
Aryan tribes, and handed down quite as accurately as 
the Jewish version before the latter became fixed in 
written characters. 

The Hawaiian language was first reduced to writing 
by the missionaries. Previous to their coming, there 
was not even a picture-writing like that of the Egyptians 
and Aztecs. But the history was well remembered and 
accurately repeated, and the rite of circumcision and the 
cities of refuge remained until modern times. 

The Hawaiians had an extensive pantheon, with all 
sorts of gods for all sorts of things. Each of the great 
gods was worshiped under various special attributes, 
which afterward came to be regarded as different persons, 
and still further increased the number of deities. The 
powers of Nature were all personified, and the Hawaiians 
made these phenomena into something human like them- 



1 86 HAWAII NEI 

selves. Some of their wonder-stories are strongly remi- 
niscent of the Greeks. They deified the powers of the 
volcano. Pele, their fire -goddess, more feared and 
revered than any other deity on Hawaii, had her home 
deep down in Kilauea, as Vulcan had his subterranean 
forges. Pele was identical with the Samoan fire-goddess, 
Fee. Oddly enough, there was no worship of the sun 
or moon. The Hawaiians had a god of the winds, cor- 
responding to the Grecian -^Eolus, a god who carried the 
winds in a calabash. In the twelfth century, the Hawaii- 
ans date their story of Hina, the Helen of Hawaii, who 
was stolen from her husband, and whose recovery was 
a matter of long years and terrific battles. 

A whole family of legends grew up concerning the 
creation of the islands. There is a hiatus of twelve or 
thirteen generations after the Exodus, and then the line 
of the chiefs is brought down to Wakea and his wife, 
Papa, mythical rulers with superhuman attributes, who 
existed, if at all, before the Polynesians left the Asiatic 
coast. Papa is the name given to the earth by the 
Maoris. This royal pair was mutually jealous. Wakea 
found favor with the beautiful Hina (not the kidnaped 
one), and the island of Molokai was their child. In 
retaliation, Papa gave her love to a warrior called Lua, 
and the island of Oahu was born of them. The old 
names were Molokai-Hina and Oahu-a-Lua. Another 
legend is that Hawaii-loa, a distinguished chief, sailed 
westward, and, guided by the Pleiades, discovered the 
Hawaiian group, giving to the largest island his own 
name, and to the others the names of his children. 
Quite as fanciful a story relates how an immense bird 
laid an egg on the ocean (the ancient Finns conceived 



HAWAII NEI 187 

of the earth as an egg). This one was hatched by the 
tropic winds, and the Hawaiian group came into being. 
Came then a man and woman in a canoe from Kahiki, 
with a pair of dogs, hogs, and fowls, landed on the 
eastern shore of Hawaii, and became the progenitors of 
the Hawaiian people. When Paao came from Samoa, 
in the eleventh century, he added a fourth god to the 
Hawaiian trinity, it being the Polynesian method to count 
by fours. War-gods grew up, and each trade or profes- 
sion had its tutelar deity. The beach of Kaloa, on the 
southeast coast of Hawaii, was the favorite source of idols, 
for here the stones were supposed to propagate of them- 
selves. The land abounded with gnomes and fairies, and 
the waters with nymphs and monsters, whose caprices 
are the themes of many folk-lore tales. With every 
stream and gorge and headland some fairy story is con- 
nected, and the old-time bards kept these legends alive 
among the people. 

This abundant invention is used by some as a reproach 
to the Hawaiians. Only scholars understand the spon- 
taneous invention of a childlike people. It is delightful 
to sit on the sheltered deck of a modern steamer and 
have a cleft in a passing hill pointed out as the place 
where the demigod Maui started to remove the mountain, 
but just then the elepaio bird sang, after which no god 
could do any work. 

I sat six hours one night to hear the wonderful story 
of Umi, the peasant prince of Hawaii, told by a native 
story-teller. For six hours the following night the won- 
derful recital went on. Then I asked my singer of meles 
if he could not condense, as Umi was then but in his 
prime and my stay was drawing to a close, but the singer 



1 88 HAWAII NEI 

of sagas said that it would take twelve hours more to 
complete the story. He had never told it in less time, 
and he could not omit any of the details. I shall never 
hear the end of Umi in the original. 

No part of the Hawaiian history of later date is more 
interesting than that relating to the tabus that prevailed 
in regard to women. Women were not allowed to eat 
with men, and certain foods — plantains, bananas, cocoa- 
nuts, swine — were denied them. They were not allowed 
to take part in the heiau ceremonies, but neither were 
they sacrificed to the gods. And, if the position of 
women is to be taken as a criterion of civilization, the 
Hawaiians were not so low in the scale. There was an 
equal standard of morality. The chiefs had more than 
one wife, but plural husbands for chiefesses was also the 
rule. Women chose their own husbands, and rank and 
descent were traced through the mother. A chief who 
wished to have children of the highest rank could not 
marry a peasant woman, but must raise his family through 
marriage with a chiefess of higher rank than his own, or 
with his own sister, niece, or daughter, which produced 
descendants of the very bluest blood. There was no 
such thing as a family name, and the single name of the 
child had no relation to that of the father. That custom 
still prevails in Hawaii, though the European fashion of 
Christian names is now being adopted, and the Hawaiian 
name of the head of the family is taken as the family 
name. Those who mistakenly pity Hawaiian women 
should remember that it was the husband's duty to beat 
the taro while the wife made the tapa-<z\o\h, in a pleasant 
division of domestic duties. The Salic law was not 
known in Hawaii. There were many queens in their 



HAWAII NEI 189 

own right in the old days, and very often the chief coun- 
selor and prime minister of the king was a woman of 
brains and rank. In the matter of sex equality, Hawaii 
could give points to some of her more civilized sisters. 

I have selected the story of Hiku and his rescue of his 
dead love, which is the Hawaiian version of Orpheus 
and Eurydice, as a typical Hawaiian wonder-tale. The 
story follows : 

Sailing away and away from the northern coast, where 
the water is green and gray, and great storms sweep over 
the face of the ocean, you come at last to a sea all blue 
and silver, where winged bluefish skim the surface like 
sea-butterflies, and the ocean seems like a platter of delft, 
all gilded at sunset and silvered at moonrise. Over the 
water sweet winds blow the fragrance of a million flowers 
until your nostrils are weary, and you know that you have 
reached the land where it is always June. A long, long 
while ago, on the island of Hawaii dwelt a youth named 
Hiku and his mother Hana. Their home was near the 
top of Hualalai, a high mountain which looks like a whale 
asleep. It has a long and gradual slope, and its curved 
top is almost perpetually canopied with cloud. On Hua- 
lalai' s sloping sides is a growth of fresh young sandal- 
wood, but in Hiku's day there was a dense and fragrant 
forest upon its hoary sides. Hana and Hiku were kapa- 
beaters. They made cloth from the bark of the wauke 
and mamake trees. They peeled off strips of the bark 
and scraped away the outer coat with shells. After soak- 
ing a while in water, each strip was laid upon a smooth log 
and beaten with a grooved mallet of hard wood until it 
resembled thick, flexible paper, the strips being united by 
lapping the edges and beating them together. Some of 



I90 HAWAII NEI 

the kapa they made was so fine that it resembled muslin, 
and some of it was thick and tough, like wash-leather. 
The malo that Hiku tied about his loins was of the thick 
kapa, and Hana's pau consisted of five thicknesses of 
the thinner cloth. Sometimes they bleached the kapa 
or stained it with mineral dyes, impressing it with bamboo 
stamps in a great variety of patterns and colors, afterward 
glazing it with the resin that they collected from the trees. 
Best of all, Hiku liked to paint pictures on the kapa — 
red spears or forked lightnings. Wielding the heavy 
mallet made his arms ache. 

Whenever it became necessary to get new shells from 
the seashore to scrape the kapa, or when great piles of 
the finished stuff were ready for exchange, Hana would 
go down [the mountain to barter her wares for fish and 
taro and seaweed and shells. On these occasions she 
never allowed Hiku to accompany her, though he begged 
hard to go. He had been born on Hualalai, and he had 
never been to the seashore. There were no other chil- 
dren on the mountain, but Hiku made up interesting 
little games of his own with old and bearded trees, and 
played his ukeke, made of a flexible strip of bamboo, 
with two or three strings of cocoanut fiber, and his kiokio y 
or gourd, with three holes, one for the nose, and two for 
the fingers. 

To tell the truth, Hana was jealous of Hiku. She 
wanted him to stay with her always, and she feared that 
if he once went down to the village and found how merry 
they were there, bathing, swimming, and skimming the 
waves on surf-boards, he would never want to dwell on 
Hualalai' s lonely heights again. And so she kept him at 
home, and invented new stories of the gods to tell him, 



HAWAII NEI I9I 

as the great mallets came down on the tree-fiber with a 
cadence like a chorus of anvils. 

And she saw Hiku grow from a round, brown child to 
a tall, slim youth, with beautiful arms and legs, and with 
fine muscles that were the result of much beating of kapa. 
His eyes were black and piercing, and Hana knew, though 
she did not tell him, that he could throw his wooden spear 
further and straighter than any of the youths in the vil- 
lage below. 

One fine night, when Hiku was about eighteen, the 
constant trade-wind died away. The moon shone full and 
clear, and the breaking surf could be plainly heard. There 
could also be heard the booming of the hzda-drxxms and 
the voices of singers, which came clearly up through the 
blue night-air to the grass house where Hiku and his 
mother lived. And Hiku, who had been restless for 
days, suddenly sprang to his feet, and tightening his 
malo, declared that he was going down to the village, and 
see what they did with the drums under the moon. And 
though Hana hung about his neck and caressed him, 
weeping piteously and begging him to stay, he would not 
be restrained, and started out, and the best that she could 
do was to win his promise that he would come back some 
day. 

And for days and days, the sound of Hana's wailing 
could be heard through the forest, and her mallet was 
silent. Hiku was wild with delight to see a whole street 
of grass houses, instead of a single hut, and it was very 
much warmer on the seashore than on the cold mountain- 
top. The slender stems of the cocoanuts bent in the 
wind, and Hiku soon learned to run up them with 
monkey-like agility, and to gather the green fruit. It was 



I92 HAWAII NEI 

delightful to dive among the coral groves of the reef, and 
Hiku soon added diving and swimming to his accomplish- 
ments. And while Hana mourned in the mountain, Hiku 
was perfectly happy, and rarely thought of his old home. 

One day Hiku met a girl in the village, whose name 
was Kawelu. She was very beautiful — what fairy tale 
heroine is not? — and she was the daughter of a chief. 
She threw lets of mat'le over Hiku's head, and wher- 
ever he went she followed. And he was glad to have 
her with him, and they paddled and swam and fished 
together. But one day, the longing for the mountain, 
which the hill children never quite lose, came suddenly 
over Hiku, and he kissed the beautiful Kawelu good-by, 
and told her he must return to his mother. And Kawelu 
brought him opt /it, tiny shell - fish from the rocks, and 
rare seaweeds and spiked sea-eggs, and begged him to 
stay with her. And Hiku ate the offerings, and then 
started for Hualalai. 

Kawelu wept, and begged to be allowed to go with 
him, and, though she was a chief's daughter, she offered 
to become a beater of kapa also. But Hiku did not think 
Hana would fancy a daughter-in-law, and he was a selfish 
fellow anyway, and feared that his mother might grow 
in time to love the gentle Kawelu better than she did 
him. Now Hiku had brought with him from the mountain 
a magic staff that had been given to his mother by a great 
magician, years before. One of the properties of this 
staff was that when spoken to it would invariably answer. 
Hiku did not dare to return without his staff. Without 
it he could scarcely find his way up the tangled mountain, 
and his mother would be terribly angry. And Kawelu, 
seeing Hiku return for his staff, determined to follow 



HAWAII NEI I93 

him. So she crept along behind him, and when Hiku 
slept, Kawelu would call softly to the staff, which never 
failed to answer her. 

But when Hiku found that the faithful and gentle 
Kawelu was following, he was angry, and he called upon 
the vines behind him to grow thick in Kawelu' s path, 
which they did for fear of the magic staff. Poor Kawelu, 
tripped by the vines and bruised by falling, tried bravely 
to find her way, but she was wet with the night-dews, 
and wounded by the stout vines that clasped hands in 
front of her. At last Hiku and his staff were so far ahead 
of her that she could no longer hear the voice of the 
staff. Weak and exhausted, the poor little chiefess 
turned back and returned to her village after nightfall. 
Sick with longing, and broken-hearted at Hiku's cruel 
treatment, Kawelu became ill, and though many black 
pigs were ordered sacrificed for her in the heiau, she 
died in a few days, and was wrapped in some of Hana's 
finest kapa, and her body laid in state. While the wailing 
was going on in the village, a deputation went up the 
mountain to tell Hiku that his desertion had killed 
Kawelu. This news touched the proud spirit and hard 
heart of Hiku, and he tore out his hair and wept, for he 
had all along intended to return to the village and Kawelu. 
Hiku wandered out on the mountain with his staff, asking 
himself what he should do to make reparation. At last 
he spoke the question aloud, and the staff promptly 
answered that he must bring back the spirit of Kawelu 
from the land of Milu, and restore the spirit to the body. 
It was not an easy matter to reach the abode of Milu, 
for the great valley of Waipio, at the mouth of which is 
the lua, or pit, of Milu, is quite at the other side of the 



194 HAWAII NEI 

island. But Hiku was determined to reach the rcinga^ 
or leaping-place; so he lost no time, but, gathering a few 
necessaries in a calabash, he started out. Before reaching 
his destination, Hiku made for himself a swing of kaoli- 
vines which he bound to a koa-tree which grew con- 
veniently near the reinga. Now the kaoli-vme. is the 
Ipoula, which is own cousin to the morning-glory, and in 
the South Seas grows to an enormous length. It is 
very pliable, and not at all brittle, and Hiku's swing had 
but one strand, in Hawaiian fashion, with a short stick 
through a loop at the bottom. Astride this rope, and 
across the stick, the swingers sit, facing each other, with 
the heavier underneath. 

Arrived at the jumping-off place, Hiku threw his 
swing over the koa-tree, and anointed himself with rancid 
cocoanut-oil that Milu and his subjects might think him 
a person newly dead. The swing of kao/z-v'mes looked 
long enough to lassoo the moon, and Hiku began to go 
down gently, in one hand the two halves of a cocoanut- 
shell, in which to place the captured spirit of Kawelu. 
At first Hiku could see nothing. He was terribly afraid 
and wished himself at home again, but the swing vibrated 
in the dark, like a pendulum, and he was determined to 
carry out what he had undertaken. Finally, the eyes of 
the swinger became accustomed to the gloom, and he 
could see thousands of spirits roaming about, chasing 
butterflies and lizards, and reclining under the &?a-trees, 
which grow in those underground regions. 

''Alas, how shall I find my dear Kawelu?" sighed 
Hiku. 

But he had not reckoned upon the deathless constancy 
of Kawelu. She was the first to see him, and she flew 



HAWAII NEI 195 

to him and clasped him in her arms, in spite of the cocoa- 
nut-oil, which did not smell pleasant, and asked him 
when he died. Hiku evaded the question, for he did 
not want to frighten Kawelu away, and so he only told 
her how much he loved her, and how sorry he was that 
he had treated her so, and how he had intended to return 
all the time. And Kawelu was so happy that she forgot 
everything else, even the day of his death, and as they 
talked they swung and swung in great arcs, and the 
other spirits looked at them and smelled the rancid oil, 
and remarked to each other that Kawelu, who had kept 
much to herself, had met an old friend, and then they 
went on catching butterflies. For a long time the pair 
in the swing talked, Kawelu patting Hiku's cheek some- 
times, and never noticing that the spirits at the bottom 
of the liia were getting to look very small until, glancing 
up, she saw that they were quite near the opening, and 
she asked Hiku in alarm where he was taking her, for 
she feared another desertion. And Hiku, who had his 
cocoanut-husks all ready for this, answered not a word, 
but clapped the shells over her head, and took captive 
the spirit of poor Kawelu. Then he climbed up the 
kaolz-vme y hand over hand, and was soon safe on the 
sands of Waipio with the spirit of Kawelu in the cocoanut- 
shell. 

After a dip in the surf, Hiku started out for the leeward 
side of the island, where Kawelu had formerly lived, with 
the shell in one hand and the staff in the other. It was 
a long way. Hiku lived on yams and wild bananas and 
berries, and at every village he was invited to partake of 
poi and dried fish. At last he reached the village by the 
sea, at the foot of his own mountain. He went at once 



I96 HAWAII NEI 

to the house of Kawelu' s father, distinguished by the 
white &z<fo-sticks set before the door, and there he pros- 
trated himself. The old chief was delighted to see him, 
and sent at once for his principal kahuna, half doctor, 
half magician, and told him that Hiku had brought back 
the spirit of Kawelu from the land of Milu, and how 
should they get it into her body, please ? 

The first thing that the kahuna did was to order the 
body of Kawelu brought down from the burial-cave 
where it had been laid. Retainers carried it tenderly, 
wrapped in kapa y like an Egyptian mummy, and as brown 
and satiny as it was the day it was embalmed and laid 
away. The kahuna took the cocoanut-shell and began 
his incantations. He first raised the nail of the great toe 
and slipped the soul underneath. Then he began to 
press it upward. He had a hard time to get it past the 
ankle-joint, but he smoothed and rubbed and patted and 
pushed, and finally it slid by. There was a still harder 
time to get it past the knee, but presently that, too, was 
accomplished, and so it went on through the rest of the 
body until it reached the heart, and then, slowly, almost 
imperceptibly, the lungs of Kawelu expanded, and she 
opened her eyes. 

Then there was a great pounding of drums and a 
shouting in the village, and all the people rejoiced that 
the gentle soul of Kawelu had come home again, and the 
old chief fell on Hiku's neck and thanked him. And 
Hiku kissed Kaweiu, and they prepared to celebrate the 
wedding. And the oddest part of it all was, that Kawelu 
could remember nothing of the swing, or the nether 
world. The last thing she remembered was the vines 
that grew behind Hiku, and the utter heart- weariness with 






HAWAII NEI 197 

which she turned back to the village. Their marriage 
was followed by a great feast, and when Kawelu's father 
died, Hiku succeeded him, having as his counselors, 
Kawelu his wife, Hana his mother, and his magic staff. 
And Hiku loved Kawelu so well that, though by the law 
of the country he was entitled to as many wives as he 
chose, his affection for her occupied every nook in his 
heart, and she had the distinction of being the only wife 
of her husband, and in all Hawaii there was no pair so 
happy. 

In this wise loved Orpheus and Eurydice in Hawaii 



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